


Adopted By The Bad Batch AU

by QuimeraTheTraveler



Series: Open Eyes, Cold Mind, Warm Heart [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: "Domestic" Fluff, Canon-Typical Violence, Found Family, No Romance, No Smut, Platonic Love, Spontanious Adoption, Swearing, Team as Family, as in we're 4 commandoes and 1 teen and we're going to teach you how to defend yourself, lesbian butch OC, while being soft and supportive about it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 80,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25032355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuimeraTheTraveler/pseuds/QuimeraTheTraveler
Summary: Ducky, but Dani is picked up from Earth by the Bad Batch instead of a random shipCan be enjoyed as a "The Bad Batch gets a lesbian daughter and drink Respect Women Juice" fic
Relationships: Clone Force 99 | Bad Batch & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Open Eyes, Cold Mind, Warm Heart [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553920
Comments: 198
Kudos: 198





	1. In a galaxy far, far away...

**Author's Note:**

> For storytelling purposes, in this fic the Clone Wars lasted waaaaaaaay longer than in canon.   
> When found with a canon character, picture them with their canon age
> 
> Brought to you by @prettyflyforacacti's genius prompts and questions!

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO BUY FUEL FROM THAT SHADY GUY!!!”, Crosshair screeched, hanging on to the back of the pilot seat for dear life.

“They said it was the _good stuff_!”, Wrecker defended himself.

“Too good, too good!”, Tech’s teeth shuddered with the ship as he tried to bring the _Havoc Marauder_ out of hyperspace, or ultraspace, or whatever the hell that was.

It felt like someone had thrown three full shipments of spice in the mix of hyper fuel.

“I got this, I got this—“, Tech muttered to himself, hands flying over keys and switches, until finally the blissful sound of the hyperspace engine powering down washed over them.

They gave a collective relieved sigh.

“Figure out where we are”, Hunter muttered, trying to stare out the viewport.

Nothing seemed familiar, but maybe it was just disorientation from their bumpy journey. Maybe it was just impossible to be able to orientate oneself at every point of deep space, never mind his enhanced senses.

“Already on it, Sarge”, Tech piped back, but it was low, tired. He was going to need to take a brake once they managed to plot a course back.

“We still have a load of that stuff”, Wrecker reported, coming back from the back of the ship. “Should I change it for our reserve of regular fuel?”

“Might be the wisest thing to do, yeah”, Hunter agreed.

“Hold on that”, Tech said, still not looking up from his screens. “We might need that extra, highly unstable boost if we want to be able to be back to our galaxy in less than… seven to eight months of hyperspace travel. Which our fuel reserves can’t take. So it’s the shady fuel or nothing.”

“Peachy…”, Crosshair grumbled, taking a toothpick to his mouth.

“’Our galaxy’?”, Hunter quoted carefully.

“Yes”, Tech nodded. “We, uh—Let’s say we’re on a galaxy far, far away…”

“But we can go back”, Wrecker wanted to ensure, seeking reassurance.

“Sure, sure. We just have to turn around—”

A beeping coming from the terminals interrupted him, getting all his attention as he slid back to it.

“What is it?”, Crosshair inquired, wondering himself what could they be detecting when they were in the literal middle of nowhere.

“A distress signal”, Tech hummed, with a slight hint of amazement in his voice.

So: there was intelligent life out here. It wasn’t that unusual. Not enough to incite amazement in him.

“What about it?”, Hunter pressed.

Tech seemed to hesitate a moment before leaning forwards again, double checking. When that was done, he checked again. He swivelled his chair around to face his squadmates.

“It’s Kaminoan technology.”

A stunned silence flooded the cockpit.

“…Okay, let’s leave”, Crosshair deadpanned, turning away.

“Cross—”

“What? You’re going to tell me you want to go and pick up a stranded Kaminoan? Anyways, we don’t know how long this signal has been on. They could be long dead, for what we know.”

“Kaminoans rarely leave their planet”, Tech supplied. “If one of them really went _that_ far away from home, I doubt they would bother with a distress beacon. And it’s been on for three hours.”

“So chances are that it’s stolen tech. Might even be a trap: no reason to trouble ourselves with it”, the sniper waved off, and glanced around, checking his partner’s reactions.

Wrecker had his arms crossed on the co-pilot seat, seemingly bored. Hunter was standing, his arms also crossed as he stared at the display of the beacon.

Oh, this wasn’t goo—

“We’ll check it out”, the Sergeant declared. “If it’s a trap, then we get to blow up something”, he glanced pointedly at Wrecker, who smiled in excitement. “And if it’s just a lost piece of tech, we get to retrieve it and do whatever we want with it.”

And with that, Hunter had two out of four plus himself on his side.

Grumbling exasperatedly, Crosshair went to ready his rifle.

He hoped it was a trap.

The beacon let them to a planet of great oceans and uniquely shaped continents. The only inhabitable planet in the whole solar system, for what their initial scans gathered. There were traces of other ships passing by at the edge of the system. They might have picked up the distress beacon too, but they seemed to be avoiding nearing that planet as much as possible.

“There’s information packages”, Tech noticed, already reading them over. “Here it says that the species living here are pretty aggressive among themselves, so it’s highly probable that they would be violent towards outsiders.”

“We’re not going to take on a whole planet, _are we_?”, Crosshair scowled.

“Let’s just try to be sneaky”, Hunter huffed. “Tech, where’re we going?”

“Hm, an island, an important distance away from the continent. Night time. I’ll turn down the lights and circle over the sea. Let’s hope the people there doesn’t have much of a night life.”

Nobody said anything to that. Stealth wasn’t really their strong suit, but… They could always bail if things went south.

Despite taking the long way to their destination, land soon came into view. Tech brought the _Havoc Marauder_ higher as they approached the signal’s location.

“We’re here”, he finally announced.

Bellow them, there was what seemed to be a garden attached to a house, just big enough to land their ship in it.

“Get ready”, Hunter gave the all-clear, and Tech brought the ship down while the others geared up.

Next to the still closed door, Hunter closed his eyes to focus his senses on the outside. He could hear the fresh breeze and the salt in the air was already making his nose itchy. There were noises of domestic life beyond the limits of the property, and within it; a single, nervous heartbeat that emerged from the garden’s bushes, approaching the _Havoc Marauder_ with cautious fear.

Wrecker nudged him slightly.

“…It’s only one person. They’re young. Nervous”, he reported, and hesitated for a moment before setting his blaster down and leaning it against the side of the door, out of sight from the outside.

“We’ll be ready to cover you”, Crosshair nodded as Tech trudged to join them.

Hunter nodded back and palmed the door open.

He spotted the local immediately, seeing them take a step back from where they had been waiting at a safe distance from the door.

_Common sense. Good._

He stood still for a moment, just waiting to see if they turned aggressive.

But he only saw big, nervous brown eyes looking up at him from beneath dark, curly hair cut in a fashion that resembled the undercut lots of reg clones went for, if not for the lack of totally shaven parts, instead covered with a layer of short hair. She had a backpack hanging from her back and a bag held in one hand.

Seeing that he didn’t move, she stood her ground.

Noticing her hesitation, Hunter raised his arms slowly to remove his helmet. She looked at him intently, shifting a bit un surprise and maybe a bit of unease at the sight of his face.

Oh, yeah. Guess the skull tattoo wasn’t all that comforting.

“Hello”, he tried to speak up amicably. “Can we help you?”

She perked up, blinking with notable surprise.

“I—Uh—Need passage? I want go to… Corussanta? Coru—Corsuscanta?”, she said in an accent he had never heard before.

Well, at least she knew Basic.

On the other hand: there was a civvie literally asking them for a ride.

She jerked back when Tech leaned over Hunter’s shoulder to get a look.

“Coruscant?”

She seemed to think about it for a moment, and then nodded.

“How do you know about Coruscant?”

“I, uh—“, she seemed to struggle for words. “My… mo-mother told me.”

Crosshair jabbed at Hunter’s kidneys, getting his attention.

“What?”, the Sergeant asked.

“Why are we still here?”, the other grumbled. “We’re no taxi! I’ll even give you one better: we can’t take civilians with us!”

He was right. Even if they agreed, they travelled from mission to mission, and having a teen with them could put all of them in danger.

With a heavy sigh, Hunter turned to the outside again.

“Listen, kid”, he began, and she already tensed up. “We can’t take you with us, it’s dangerous. But I’m sure there will be safer, willing ships that will take you i—”

“No! Please!”, she squeaked in a panic. “I have to go or they’ll find me!”

They all tensed. So she was being tailed?

Wrecker, Tech and Crosshair readied their weapons. The girl gasped and stepped back when she realized what they were, but froze in place and looked over her shoulder, as if she also feared what laid beyond the house.

Hunter could hear voices coming closer from down the street.

“Who’s looking for you?”, he asked.

She looked more and more nervous, alternating from tense as a rod to trembling.

“Please, please!”, she went on instead. “I don’t want to stay, they’ll give me away but my dad is out there and if they figure out I’m half alien they’re going to flip! Please _please_ I don’t want to end up as a lab rat or a—!”

That last part had been more of a paranoid rambling.

But it struck a chord in _all_ of them.

“…Not long ‘til sunrise”, Tech updated them, voice quiet in the way that let on that most of his brain was focused on memories.

“Get on”, Hunter blurted out before it even became a coherent thought.

She startled, blinking at them with a mix of hope and insecurity.

“Come on!”, he urged her, pushing the others inside so she had a clear way to come in. “We’re leaving!”

The girl perked up, looking over her shoulder one last time as the voices drew near, and then she was hurrying up the stairs, accepting Hunter’s hand as he pulled her in.

“Thank you”, she breathed out.

The hand he was holding was shaking.

“What’s your name?”, he asked.

“Du—ni. Dani. Dani Luna.”

* * *

[What Dani Went Through The Day Before](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19264822/chapters/56997565) (plus being picked up by a random ship instead of the BB)


	2. To Infinity And Beyond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopping onto the first ship that agreed to take you to space seemed like a good idea, but on second thought...

And just like that, Dani found herself in a spaceship heading for the unknown with four strangers.

The thought hit her like a train: she had no idea who they were and what were their intentions. They wore armour, and the space felt cramped and they were pretty intimidating. She shifted awkwardly, caught between ready to fight and waiting for them to point her where to go or what to do.

In conclusion: everyone’s reaction when being invited to a friend’s house for the first time.

She looked around: everything seemed neatly organised and clean, no suspicious splotches of dried blood or anything. Dani took that as a good signal.

“Thank you”, she said again shakily, not knowing what else to do.

“It’s alright”, the man with the tattooed face almost… comforted her?

Then he left with two more, and she was left with the tallest of them, who seemed to be staring down at her from within his painted helmet. His hands went up and Dani took a step back, wary; but he merely reached to take off his helmet.

“Hello!”, his voice boomed, startling her again. Her attention was fully robbed by his huge scar and misted eye. “Name’s Wrecker!”

Huh. Weird name, but her parents had been calling her Ducky for most of her life, so…

“Hi”, she managed to chirp back. “What happened to your face?”

His smile grew to show his teeth.

“Battle injury!”, he replied proudly, resting his fist on his hips. “It’s a GREAT story! Buuuuuuuut guess there will be time to tell it later. Watcha got there?”, Wrecker gestured to the bag she was holding in her hands.

“Uh… chocolate”, she replied, and decided to elaborate at the clueless tilt of his head. “I hoped to pay my way to… Courussac—Coruscant? With this. It’s a sweet: I hoped that the rarity of it would cover the price of the distance. You can have it, since you’re taking me with you”, she added, lifting the bag a bit for him to grab.

“Oh! Really?”, he asked, taking the bag from her.

Dani couldn’t take her eyes off of his expression. His height _was_ kinda intimidating, but seeing the sincere excitement and general friendly demeanour, it was hard to think that he would hide ill intentions.

It could _still_ be a trick, an act, but—

“…This looks like a dried turd”, he muttered, scowling at the chocolate tablet he had unwrapped.

Dani _wheezed_.

Wrecker blinked at her in startled worry and reached out hesitantly, thinking she was suffocating or something. But then she looked up and she was blushing with laughter.

“How _dare_ you!”, she whined. “I mean. You’re totally right, but: _how dare you_?!”, she laughed loudly.

“So… it’s not edible?”, he eyed the chocolate again.

“Yes it is!”, she insisted, still giggling.

“It’s not! You’re pulling my leg!”, he rolled his eyes.

“Hey, if you don’t want it; I’ll eat it, no problem!”, she extended a hand and gave a smug smile.

Wrecker eyed her hand and the chocolate before betting and breaking a piece, dropping it in her hand.

Dani brought it to her mouth without hesitation and maintained eye contact at all moment; holding the chocolate between her teeth to show off only to let it disappear behind her lips as she chewed. She didn’t even try to exaggerate her reaction to chocolate, but the pleasure she felt must have showed on her face, because Wrecker eyed the sweet with renewed interest before breaking a piece for himself and chewing on it.

He was slow and careful at first, probably wary himself; but when the taste registered he froze, eyes wide in more than pleasant surprise, and then he was chewing faster and counting how many tablets were in the bag.

“So. Do you like it?”, she raised an eyebrow at him, already knowing the answer and very amused by it.

Wrecker startled as if he had forgotten she was there, and then straightened, trying to pull a serious face.

“It… doesn’t taste like a turd”, he nodded, avoiding eye contact but also glancing at her, checking her reaction.

His words didn’t sound bad intended. He was just being stubborn. Playful.

Dani gave him a playful smirk in return.

Wrecker flashed her a smile.

“Alright, uh… We have to find you a place to sleep. This ship is supposed to be just for the four of us”, he mumbled to himself, turning around and walking away.

She took that as her cue to follow him.

“Oh”, she blurted out quietly, trotting after him. “I’m sorry I’m a bother…”

“No, no!”, he turned to wave his hands at her. “We can find space, I’m sure! Let’s just—“, he palmed a door open at the side of the small corridor and peeked inside. “No, not here—“, he resumed his way, so Dani kept trotting after him. “We ought to have a spare bunk; we’ll just take it out and dock it with ours!”

Dani shrunk on herself, uncomfortable.

The idea of sleeping in the same room as four strange men was deeply unsettling, never mind that Wrecker seemed friendly for now. But she also couldn’t demand to have a room for herself: the ship wasn’t _that big_ and she knew she was there thanks to a lucky choice of words rather than their willingness to give her a lift. If she pressed, they could kick her out.

She patted the pocketknife hidden in her cargo pants’ pockets, willing herself to be at ease.

They came out into a wider room: where there were two bunks attached to each side wall, with neat piles of what seemed like personal effects near them; and further away, terminals and a viewport, starts shining against the void of space.

Dani startled into stillness, coming to the realization that she was _in space._

“We’re already going home, Tech?”, Wrecker called out, and Dani finally snapped from her wonder to notice the man with glasses sitting on a chair by the consoles.

“Yep. As close as it gets. Crosshair and Hunter are checking that the fuel is as stable as possible”, he swivelled around on his chair, perking up at the sight of her, but just staring.

“She’s paying us with chocolate!”, Wrecker piped up, offering him the bag.

He took it with rabid curiosity, picking the unwrapped tablet and bringing it to eye-level before pushing a button on the side of his glasses. “Foodstuff?”

“Real sweat”, the giant nodded.

“You _tasted_ it?!”, Tech scolded him. “Wrecker! You should have brought it to me for analysis first! That she can eat and digest this doesn’t mean _we_ can!”

“But I feel fine!”, he grumbled.

“I’ve heard that when you eat chocolate, your brain releases the same pleasure chemicals that it would with sex”, Dani provided randomly, face schooled into blank technicism.

The other two blinked at her, waiting for an add-on or something, but she just blinked at them like she had brought up a totally valid subject of conversation.

“See? If anything, I’ll feel better”, Wrecker told Tech.

The smaller man huffed a smile and turned back to his terminal, shaking his head.

Dani stood on her tiptoes to peek at the screen, but only saw strange symbols.

“Are those numbers, or letters?”, she asked, brows furrowed.

“Both”, Tech replied, and paused on his keying to look over his shoulder. “You have never seen Aurebesh before?”

“…No”, she replied, self-conscious.

“It makes sense”, he added quickly. “That you haven’t. I imagine this is your first time leaving your planet, too?”

“Yes.”

“How did you learn Basic?”

“I… I don’t know…”, she replied honestly, shrinking on herself.

A beat of silence.

“I’ll teach you”, he said, and turned back to his computers.

“What?”

“I’ll teach you. To read Aurebesh. And more things that you’ll need, if you want to navigate our galaxy. If you’re willing to learn.”

“I—Yes! Yes please!”, Dani took the chance immediately. “Thank you! I’ll do my best!”

“Good”, Tech nodded to his screens.

“We’re ready to go”, a voice said from behind them, and suddenly there were all in the cockpit.

Dani couldn’t help but tense again, feeling trapped.

She wasn’t being especially subtle about it, so all of them noticed.

The man with the facial tattoo cleared his throat softly.

“Sorry, I guess introductions are in order and there’s a lot you’ll have to catch on. “I’m Sergeant Hunter, and they are Tech, Crosshair and Wrecker”, he pointed to his companions. “The reason for the armours and weapons is that we’re a commando team.”

He tried to keep his explanation informal in an effort to keep her at ease.

The girl squinted at some words, as if she had trouble recalling their meaning, but seemed to understand the general idea of what he was saying.

“You’re… military?”

“Yes.”

“Is there more than one war going on right now?”, she asked slowly, picking her words carefully.

“Not that I know”, Hunter replied after thinking about it for a moment. “Tech?”

“There are some conflicts scattered through systems, since some planets uphold conquer strategies and there’s the everlasting issue of the Hutts, the Zygerrian Empire and slavery in general; but currently the biggest and main war in the galaxy is the one we’re fighting in”, the other supplied.

“Oh”, she blinked, processing the information.

“Don’t worry about it”, Hunter crossed his arms and shrugged lazily, giving a brief reassuring smile. “Coruscant is the heart of the Republic, so it’s safe there. We can’t really take you to the planet; it’s a Core World and we move mostly around the Outer Rim, but we can drop you at a spaceport with ships heading there”, he offered.

“Thank you. I couldn’t ask for more”, she nodded with gratefulness, but her brain short-circuited and she gave a small bow, startling herself when she realized she had no idea if a bow meant the same to them as it did to her. “Sorry, I have never been around military before and I don’t know how to act to be respectful towards you…”, she admitted.

“Ah, you don’t have t—“, Hunter started.

“Only Hunter has enough rank to have a title”, Tech supplied faster than him. “You may call him Sergeant. The rest of us are Troopers, but personally I don’t mind you calling me by my name.”

“’Trooper’”, Crosshair scoffed, taking a break of glaring at Dani to finally contribute to the conversation. “That’s the most impersonal, dehumanizing shit people is allowed to call us.”

Dani jerked a bit at his bitter words, thinking about them. If three of them were troopers, calling them by that word was inconvenient. It sat strangely on her that they didn’t have enough rank to be addressed with a special respect, but…

“Can I call you by your name, then?”, she tried.

“If you must”, he shrugged, and looked away, munching at his toothpick.

She grimaced faintly at his passive-aggressiveness.

“Of course she will”, Wrecker piped up. “She’ll be sleeping with us for _months_ ‘til we get somewhere with ships headed to Coruscant! You’ll have to talk some time!”

Dani squirmed in discomfort, forcing herself to take a deep breath to remain calm.

They were being civil. They had told her their plan to get her where she wanted to do. If they had ill intentions, they could have already gone with it and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. They were being civil. They were—

While she was spacing out, Hunter and Tech exchanged a glance.

“—I should go find the bunk and attach it in place…”, Wrecker still went on.

“We have a relatively empty storage closet. We could cram the stuff in our other storage room and fit the bunk there”, Tech supplied.

Dani startled out of her anxiousness, blinking at him.

“I, uh… I really don’t want to be a bother…”, she said weakly, rubbing the back of her head.

It was crystal clear that, despite the honesty of her words, she would be prone to nervous breakdowns if she had to sleep with strangers.

“It’s no problem”, Hunter said quickly, and he was the boss, so that was final.

“Oh… okay”, Wrecker sounded mildly disappointed, going so far as to pouting. “I’ll start moving things, then.”

“Oh! I’ll—I’ll help you with that!”, Dani piped up, really loathing herself for causing them trouble.

She didn’t intend to seem a push-over, but she really didn’t want to laze around and just be a spoiled passenger; at least she would help with what she could.

“Maybe you should take care of that once we have done the jump back. I’m sorry to say: but your first hyperspace experience is going to be… bumpier than usual”, Tech smiled sheepishly at Dani.

“I… Okay?”

“Just hang on onto something”, Crosshair grumbled, already gripping the back of the pilot’s seat like a koala.

Hunter went to sit to a console to the side and buckled on. Wrecker sat on the copilot seat and clutched the underside of it. Dani moved to hug the back of the chair.

“Ready?”, Tech asked without looking back.

Luna didn’t know if it mattered, but she nodded.

She _really_ was leaving the Earth behind.

“Let’s go”, he pushed a lever.

The ship rattled madly around them, but Dani barely registered it as she saw the light of hyperspace for the first time in her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're new to this series, I just want you to know that I headcannon that mitochondria are starved midichlorians because the Earth is too far away from the centre of the SW galaxy for the energy of the Force to arrive to them and be able to canalize it in the form of Force-users.
> 
> You can probably tell where this is going


	3. First Contacts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I really have to stablish the relationships before writing the indulgent family fluff, don't I?  
> *sigh*

Dani looked more and more exhausted, until finally, when the storage closet was emptied of heavy crates and extra supplies and the bunk secured in place with a spare blanket and pillow thrown on it, she curled up on it and passed out.

Crosshair didn’t say anything at first, but gave them that displeased silence of his (one of his many kinds of silence) as they went on with their routines, already on the way to their next mission in the Outer Rim. The jump back had been jumpy, as expected, and had drained them completely of that ultraspace fuel, but it’s not like they wanted to repeat the experience.

“Didn’t know we were getting her a suite”, he finally grumbled.

“Do _you_ want a stranger sleeping in the same room as you?”, Hunter countered, not pausing on his card game with Wrecker.

“I mean. I don’t mind: it’s four against one”, he shrugged.

“Exactly”, Tech chimed in, typing away at a smaller device as he slumped on the seat, ready to nap. “That’s why she’s tense. That’s why she needs a space she perceives as safe.”

“She had _Kaminoan technology_ ”, the sniper pointed out.

“And we will ask her about that when she wakes up”, Hunter reassured him.

Crosshair held his gaze for a second more, but then looked away and let it go.

Truth is, the Sergeant could see why he was so suspicious. The situation had already been weird on itself, and the Kaminoan beacon had been the icing to the day.

But still: Dani had turned out to be a scared teen that seemed to want nothing but safe passage. She had even made an effort to learn how to be polite towards them, so at least she was humble. She was also quite ignorant of the war and was probably diving into something she didn’t understand.

…They would be having a long, confusing conversation soon, he had no doubt.

“Aw, Cross. How come you don’t like her? She’s a twig, just like you!”, Wrecker laughed, laying two cards on the table and dealing an important blow to Hunter.

“Ha, ha; very funny”, he laughed dryly, but at the end of it there was a smile letting on that he enjoyed the familiar teasing.

“It’s just… she’s so _small_ ”, the tallest wondered out loud.

“She’s not small by any means”, Tech chimed in. “I’m sure she is due a couple growth spurts. If she has been well-fed during the course of her childhood and continues to be, I’m certain she will reach my height, at the very least.”

“Feed her. Shit, is she going to be able to stomach our rations?”, Crosshair voiced their new concern. “We’re not going to offer her our supply of fresh food too, _are we_?”

“She looks human enough. She should be fine, but I guess I should make some analysis to be sure…”, Tech hummed, head lolling as he started to fall asleep.

“We can always make a stop somewhere and hunt something. No big deal”, the Sergeant dismissed easily.

Crosshair gave him a pointed look.

“What? Come on: you know you can’t grow on ration bars. She’s going to need substance. Plus, she’s paying us with food, isn’t she? It’s only fair that we share.”

“Oh, yeah, chocolate…!”, Tech jerked up, blinking owlishly and patting around to find the glasses he had set down. “Gotta run tests on that too…”

Wrecker caught him as the slicer passed him by and tugged gently, easily leading Tech to sit on the bench next to him and lean against his body.

“S’okay, Tech. Nothing wrong with chocolate”, he hummed soothingly.

He was asleep within three seconds.

Ducky woke up disoriented and feeling as tired as she was when she was finally able to sleep. Her memories of the dreams she just had were already fading, but she knew they had been plagued with the last moments of her mother. Tears flooded her eyes and she sniffed quietly, remembering that she wasn’t alone in that ship.

Still, she let herself cry. She had learned to cry in silence a long time ago, after she understood that her father wasn’t coming back anytime soon but not wanting to worry her mother about it. When she was finally done, having no idea for how long she had been at it or how much she had managed to sleep, she had to wrestle herself to go out. The wish to just stay there, where she was alone and couldn’t get in anyone’s way was almost overwhelming. But they had mentioned _months_ of travel. She only wanted to curl up and not move, but she would have to risk social interaction.

Maybe Wrecker would still be nice to her. Maybe Tech would teach her things and she’ll be able to distract herself of the looming unknown she was heading to.

With that small hope, she shuffled her way out of the storage closet that was now her room. It wasn’t much: there was space for the bunk and to walk out, but she could picture a small table fitted into a corner next to the head of the bed and maybe a small stool that could fit under it; and with that it would be more than an acceptable living space to her. At the moment, her backpack laid against a wall next to the bed. She still had her phone and pocketknife secured in her pants’ pockets.

With that as a reassurance, she took a deep breath and stepped out.

The corridor was empty. She took a moment to listen for noises and heard them coming from a part of the ship she hadn’t been in yet. Dani hesitated for a moment, but then decided that she would end up seeing the entirety of the ship at some moment and avoiding all contact with its inhabitants wasn’t a good plan at all; so she walked cautiously towards the sound.

It was so silent. She could hear the hum of the engine and the sounds of what she guessed was domestic life in space, but the motor on itself was so silent. Nothing like the loud take-offs of rockets, but she supposed there was no point in comparing an attempt to leave the atmosphere to cruising through… whatever that was. Hyperspace? It was cool.

There was a closed door in front of her. The voices came from the other side. She approached it cautiously, wondering if it was automatic.

Even already considering it, she yelped when it swished open.

She huffed in annoyance at herself, blushing at the quiet laughs from the men inside.

“Good morning”, Hunter was doing his best to hide his already small smile. The amusement in his eyes was replaced with his usual softness, maybe even a bit more, and Dani squirmed internally. It was the kind of look people gave you when they felt pity. But it was impossible he had heard her crying. She was sure she had been quiet. “You slept quite a lot.”

“Yeah”, she croaked, voice raspy from sleep and remnants of tears. “Yesterday was… a tough day”, she nodded numbly.

Dani needed the numbness over the devastating loneliness right now.

“I can imagine”, Tech spoke quickly, moving his mug in circles and watching the dark liquid inside it swirl. “Discovering that there’s a galaxy’s worth of knowledge to explore and learn must be exciting AND exhausting.”

“I’ve known that for some years”, she shrugged, taking cautious steps towards them when they didn’t display signs that they didn’t want her there. “But now I have to actually deal with it.”

“Hm. I’ve taken the liberty to plan in what order introduce you to the ongoing affairs of the galaxy; but if there’s a subject in particular that calls your attention, let me know. Caff?”, he offered her an untouched mug.

Dani took it carefully and eyed its content.

“What is it?”

“Caffeinated beverage. Now that I think of it: don’t drink too much, it may be that you can’t digest it!”

She took a small sip.

Her face twitched at the bitterness.

“Bleh, it’s like coffee!”, she grimaced at the taste.

“Not a fan, I see. I’ll drink it”, Tech extended his hand, as if he had already been half expecting that.

Dani gave it back gently.

“Sorry. I’m more of a sweet tooth person.”

“Noted. Our food right now is not… very tasty. Hope that’s not a problem”, he handed her a wrapped bar.

“It isn’t. Thanks”, she gave him a small smile, which faded quickly as she studied the bar.

It wasn’t about the quality of the food. She just didn’t think she would be able to enjoy any food at all.

Tech slid on the bench, making room for her.

She flashed him another thankful smile and sat down to eat.

Hunter was still subtly studying her. He had a right, she guessed: she was a stranger in his ship. She just whished he would stop doing it like he knew of the gaping hole inside her she was trying not to think about.

To avoid bearing his careful stare, Dani focused on the… _thing_ she was currently chewing.

It wasn’t bad, just tasteless. The texture was a bit like carton held together with mashed potatoes paste. Every now and then there was a small, disperse explosion of flavour, but she had the feeling it was just a grain of salt. She remained silent for a long moment, pondering a polite way to ask the question she was mulling over without sounding demanding.

“Do you guys get to eat something else?”

“Sometimes”, Hunter replied. “We try to balance the dried food with whatever fresh product we can get.”

“What the Sergeant means is that we are provided with the rations, but we have to get decent food by ourselves”, Tech grumbled, nose disappearing inside the mug.

“That sucks”, Dani said sympathetically.

“It does”, he agreed, and then his head tilted in curiosity. “What are you used to eating?”

“Uh… A bit of everything, I guess. Rice… that’s grain, uh; chicken, pork, beef… that’s kind of meats, and fish… Most prepared with spices and sauces.”

“Do you know how to cook?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! Maybe you could cook for us someday? It would be a nice change…”, he seemed to daydream for a moment.

“Sure!”, Dani piped up. “But, uh, I don’t know anything about, uh, alien ingredients?”

“I’ll run you through it! I’m sure we can figure out the closest substitutes possible”, Tech replied excitedly, already taking out a datapad and scrolling through it.

“Maybe later, Tech”, Hunter stopped him gently before turning his attention to Dani. “How about we show you around the ship first? Then you can settle for however long you want.”

The _Havoc Marauder_ wasn’t that big, but Ducky was grateful for the tour nonetheless. Especially when they showed her the bathroom. Refresher, they called it.

“This is where we storage our weapons and ammo”, Hunter gestured to a side door of the corridor, “We’re going to, uhm, keep it locked for safety reasons”, he shrugged sheepishly over his shoulder.

“No objections”, she put her hands in the air briefly in surrender.

He gave her a gentle smile and turned back to stare forward.

Dani wondered what was left to show her. She had already seen the cockpit, the back of which also acted as the quartet’s room; the galley, the engine room, a small room with a single bed ready and a lot of weird machinery that they called a medbay, the storage room that was now her temporary cabin, the refresher and now they had just passed the only storage room they would have as long as she was travelling with them.

“And this is our gym”, Hunter palmed the door open and she leaned to peek inside

“Hey!”, Wrecker chirped from where he was lifting weights.

“Hey”, she waved back with a smile, until she noticed Crosshair sitting around on something very bulky (and were those _legs?)_ and looking at her like he was surprised she was still there.

“We were just finishing to show her around the ship”, the Sergeant told the others.

“Ah”, Crosshair vocalized, and refrained from saying anything else because at the moment that was his way of being polite.

His brothers appreciated it, really.

“Do you lift?”, Wrecker put his weight in place and sat up, grinning with interest.

“Not really. But I think I would like to”, she said, eyes drifting to the different weights placed by the wall.

Biceps. Toned biceps. She really wanted those.

“I’ll spot for you!”, he boomed immediately, his excitement so bared to everybody that she couldn’t help but startle and be rendered mute for a second.

“Really?”, she smiled, letting his eagerness soak her up.

“Sure! Let’s start!”, he was already standing up and walking to the weights, next to where Crosshair was perched.

Dani took a step deeper into the modest gym. Crosshair was still watching her, but other than that she didn’t seem to be uninvited there.

Then, all of a sudden the thing were Crosshair was sitting on _moved_ , and she couldn’t help but jerk back.

“What’s that?!”, she asked nervously, tensing up as she looked it up and down.

“Our gonk droid”, Crosshair grinned, still sitting on it.

“You don’t have droids on your planet?”, Tech asked, looking up from his device.

“Not in our daily life”, she replied, carefully circling to get out of the droid’s way, watching it with a mix of aversion and morbid fascination.

“So, what do you think of it?”, he prompted.

“It has _legs_!”, she pointed out hysterically.

“It has places to go”, Crosshair snickered.

“Great. This thing will chase me in my nightmares AND real life”, Dani scowled.

Crosshair actually _snorted_.

Suddenly he had all the eyes in the room on him. He scrambled to come up with a distraction.

He palmed the side of the gonk droid loudly.

“Greet her”, he commanded, pointing at her, and the droid obediently turned to face her.

Dani shrieked and turned on her heel, fleeing.

“Hahaha!”, the sniper laughed. “I know what I will be leaving in front of her room every morning.”

“Cross, no.”

“Cross, yes!”

* * *

For those of you who are new and have never seen my girl, have this:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dani is low-key depressed about her mother's death


	4. Alien Tech

“Okay, I’m done”, Dani sighed, and passed the datapad with the small text he had asked her to write in Aurebesh.

It was only half a page and it had taken her an hour; but she was positive the effort would be worth it.

She considered herself lucky that Aurebesh also assigned symbols to sounds, so she and Tech had been able to compare it with the latin alphabet and make a cheat sheet for her.

Tech looked away from the star charts to check her homework.

“It’s good. Your grammar is a bit halting, but I guess that’s because you have to focus on knowing what letter you are writing. The text is understandable, though. How’s your reading?”

“Still slow”, she scowled.

Dani had taken to reading the letters of the posters hanging from the walls, but even that got boring and wasn’t very challenging. When she had said that Crosshair had tossed her some sort of weapon catalogue magazine and she had died a bit inside. But the combination of numbers and letters kept her on her toes, so she was stubbornly reading through the magazine just to spite him.

“You’ll get there”, the slicer patted her in the shoulder a bit awkwardly, unsure if it was an okay thing to do.

But she gave him a lopsided smile, and his own lips twitched up in response. Tech made to go back to his charts. They had come out of what he was dubbing ultraspace near the border of their galaxy; not very far, but enough that it still had taken them a couple days of hyperspace travel to reach it. Now they were finally heading for the closest planet with a decent market to buy much needed fuel and provisions to account for their passenger’s presence.

Just as he turned away, he caught a glimpse of Dani slumping on her seat, hand slithering to one of the many pockets in her pants before it extracted a rectangular shape.

A piece of tech.

“What’s that?”, he perked up, watching the screen light up with interest.

“It’s, uh—“, she grimaced, as if she had just realised what she was doing. “It’s called a phone. At the beginning it was a device to make calls, but now it has evolved into pretty much a hand-held computer. It has music, can take pictures, you can access the net with it…”

“Like a datapad! But smaller. It doesn’t have any keys, though. How do you interact with it?”

“It’s a touch pad. You just swipe at the screen with your fingers and it knows if you want to access an application or browse a page”, she demonstrated, turning so he could peek over her shoulder.

“Amazing”, Tech breathed out, leaning forwards. “How come you don’t use it more?”

“…I don’t think I’ll be able to charge it once the battery runs out”, she replied sorrowfully. “I don’t even know why I grabbed it now…”

“How do you charge it?”, he asked without missing a beat.

“I, uh, have this cable that you attach here, and you’re supposed to plug the other end to a connection to the electric grid…”

“Our gonk droid does that! If you give me the end of the cable that plugs into your phone, I could weld it to a charger compatible with it! Maybe I could even build you a solar-powered charger, so you are not dependent on it once you leave…”, he rambled to himself, leaning down to rummage through a small pile of scrap pushed under the controls.

Dani was left in stunned silence for a moment.

“You… would do that?”

“Yeah! It’s a challenge! I’m also interested in this touch pad technology you have. If you don’t mind me tinkering with it?”, he asked hopefully.

“As long as you’re sure it won’t stop working or the memory will be wiped out…”, she shrugged.

“I’ll be careful! I’ll made two—No, THREE back-up copies!”, he smiled to himself, already gathering materials on his hands.

“Alright. I’ll go get the cable, then”, she stood up with a small, hopeful smile, about to make her way to her room.

Ducky retrieved it quickly. She had been very uncertain about if she would ever be able to use her phone again; reason as to why she had grabbed a printed picture of her with her parents, currently neatly tucked in one of her pockets; but now she was ecstatic at the thought that Tech might be able to help her. Just the possibility of being able to listen to her playlist without worrying felt so uplifting…!

While she roamed through her pack, she bumped the movies on accident. Dani paused in her searching, sitting back on her ass to shuffle through them.

She couldn’t help but smile upon seeing some titles that brought childhood memories. It was bittersweet, tho. More bitter than sweet with each passing heartbeat.

There was a soft knock on the door, startling her out of her thoughts but not helping to slow down her building tachycardia.

“Dani?”. Hunter’s voice called. “You alright?”

Dani suddenly realised she had been panting in an effort to not cry.

She gulped down, taking a deep breath before patting her cheeks in search for tear tracks, wondering if her eyes had reddened.

“Yeah”, she croaked.

It was unconvincing even to her own ears.

“Can I come in?”, the Sergeant asked after a beat of silence, voice low and undemanding.

Ducky found no traces of tears in her face. With that settle, she didn’t want to rise suspicion or become a bother.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t turn around when the door swished open. She stayed where she was, pulling the cable to herself before haltingly reordering the movies’ cases.

“What are those?”, he asked quietly, keeping at a respectful distance to avoid make her feel caged between him and the far wall.

“Mo—movies?”, she asked, not sure if that was the word they used for it. “Stories told and recorded for entertainment?”

“Holos”, he provided.

“Holos”, she parroted, blinking at _Moana_. “I don’t even know why I grabbed them.”

Yes, she knew. She had been scared and lonely and nothing felt right and she had needed to cling to something familiar before leaping into the stars and leaving everything else she had ever known behind. Now she just whished she had latched onto something that took up less space in her backpack.

“…I’m sure Tech could rig something up to play them, if you want.”

“He’s already going to try and build a charger for me. I don’t want to give you guys more work. You must already be busy with… war… stuff?”, she risked a look at him.

When she couldn’t immediately identify the emotion in his eyes, she ducked her head.

“We’re only busy when we touch down”, he said off-hand. “I’m pretty sure he will say yes. He likes—”

“Challenges”, Dani smiled briefly. “Hm… It only has audio in Earth languages… Maybe I could make the subtitles in Basic so you can watch them too”, she hummed to herself.

By all accounts, he shouldn’t have been able to hear her.

“Sounds good”, he piped up, a smile in his voice that was still there when she peeked over her shoulder. “I’m heading for the cockpit. You coming?”, he pointed with his thumb.

“Uhm… yeah!”, she picked up the cable and stood up swiftly.

Hunter’s smile twitched in subtle encouragement and he stepped out of the room, leaving her to follow him.

“Ah, there’s something I wanted to tell you about”, he started, glancing at her over his shoulder. Dani perked up, showing she was listening. “We’ll be landing on a planet somewhen tomorrow, we have a mission; should be a quick in and out, but we would like you to stay in the ship.”

“Sure. I’ll stay put”, she agreed quickly.

She had no business following them around into a fight, anyways.

Hunter blinked in surprise, but managed to hide it by turning to face forwards. He had thought it would be way harder to convince her to stay behind. Any cadet her age would have leapt over him to get a gun and insisted on joining them but—Ah. Right, she wasn’t a cadet. And since the Republic had left the war to the clones, it made sense that nat-borns would feel aversion towards anything war-related. Did she even know how to _hold_ a blaster?

Probably not.

The thought came as shocking to him. He didn’t even know why. He _knew_ some civilians could go all their life without ever wielding a weapon, but Dani was a foreigner, a _teen_ , and she would be traveling _alone_ as soon as they unloaded her in a decent spaceport. Sure: she was heading to Coruscant, and that was a saf—who was he kidding, he had heard the stories of the planet’s underworld. A place filled with scum and those who had been systematically oppressed and forced to live in misery; and unless Luna turned out to be the bastard child of a Senator or a rich businessperson, she would very likely end up there.

He shuddered slightly.

“I’ve got enough pieces to build a solar charger!”, Tech’s voice greeted them as they arrived to the wider room.

“Cool”, Ducky smiled, sidestepping the Sergeant. “Here’s the cable”, she waved it into the air, sitting on the chair next to him.

“Alright, I just have to cut it and weld it together with the new end, if that’s alright?”

“Yeah”, she shrugged. It might be the point of no-return, but she had nothing to lose.

As he set to work, Dani grabbed her phone again, lighting up the screen. She wouldn’t be calling or browsing the internet anytime soon, but…

“What’s that?”, Hunter asked.

“Her analogue of a commlink, but with camera and music integrated!”, Tech summarized, not averting his eyes from his work. “With touch pad technology, which seems fragile and rellies on a more intelligent software, but it saves materials because it doesn’t need build-in keys.”

“Fancy”, the Sergeant hummed, watching as she scrolled through her music. He couldn’t make head or tails of the symbols on the screen. That must be how she feels when looking at Aurebesh.

Dani made to push a symbol, but seemed to hesitate and thing better of it before she kept scrolling.

“So, you have music?”, he prompted, startling Luna and making her wonder if he knew she was browsing a playlist.

“Yeah.”

“Play us something?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. We don’t have a good radio signal out there. It’ll be interesting to hear what your planet composes.”

“Uh… Well, I have a bit of anything.”

Right now, she was hovering over a song in particular that had the potential to make her breakdown, but also she couldn’t wait to hear its beat.

“This one’s a bit loud? If you don’t mind?”

“We literally work around weapons and explosions”, Tech chuckled to himself. “I doubt it will spook us.”

“Alright”, Dani accepted the challenge with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, and pressed play.

The beginning was quiet and slow, but the voice singing in an unknown language to them gained more and more strength; and right as they assumed the song was a slow one, new instruments joined in; a consistent percussion that accompanied the vocals masterfully with lots of undertones that came and went to add complexity to the melody.

Soon enough Crosshair and Wrecker appeared, watching with wide eyes as they finally found an explanation as to where the music was coming from and saw Dani singing along. At their tilted heads and confused but sincere smiles, she realized they couldn’t understand the lyrics, and hushed for a moment to gather her focus and translate as the song went:

_Do or die, you’ll never make me_

_Because the world will never take my heart_

_Go and try, you’ll never break me_

_We want it all, we wanna play this part_

_I won’t explain or say I’m sorry_

_I’m unashamed, I’m gonna show my scar_

_Give a cheer for all the broken_

_Listen here, because it’s who we are_

_I’m just a man, I’m not a hero_

_Just a boy, who had to sing this song_

_I’m just a man, I’m not a hero_

_I_

_Don’t_

_Care!_

_—_

“…Play it again!”

That night, while she slept, finally feeling at some semblance of at ease, they reached the border of the galaxy.

It felt like she had left her body for a second; getting a peek to the WHOLE galaxy at once before she spooked herself and hid inside the confines of her body again.

To any other living being in the galaxy, it had felt as if invisible eyes suddenly watched them, only to disappear in a blink.

The _Havoc Marauder_ suffered turbulences. In space.

But after checking on everybody and making sure that there was nothing wrong with the ship, there was nothing left to do but go on with their lives, if not a little wary of possible sneak attacks.

So Dani kept hiding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise action soon, I needed to set some things first before setting Ducky on the path of becoming badass


	5. Cloak And Dagger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby's first Force-powers awakening!!!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you action and here's the first taste!

Dani watched them gear up with a mix of wariness and fascination, curled up in the co-pilot seat as her eyes seemed to scan every piece of armour they put on. Crosshair was glaring at her to get her to look away, but she was so focused that she didn’t notice his eyes on her, and he eventually gave up with a roll of his eyes to finish suiting up.

“You like it?”, Wrecker smirked, noticing how rapturously she had been looking at his helmet.

“It’s cool”, she admitted without trouble.

With two long strides, he was by her side and dunking the protective gear on her head.

“Auch!”, she yelped as the top of her head collided with the inside of the helmet.

It hanged a bit loose over her neck, turning ever so slightly to a side. She brought her hands to it to keep it still and ease the weight of it a little bit. It smelled of someone else’s sweat and it was dark as fuck before a screen over the visor lighted up and she jerked, startled.

“Wrecker! Try not to crack her skull, please!”, Tech chastised, but he seemed to pay him no mind as he stared down at Dani; a grin growing on his face as he rested his hands on his hips.

“So… How do I look?”, she tempted, already patting her pockets for her phone to get a look at herself.

“Badass”, he blurted out proudly.

“Like you’re wearing the head of some sort of megafauna”, Tech added.

“Meaning that your head looks disproportionally big”, Crosshair clarified.

Dani checked herself out through her front camera.

“I mean. You’re all right”, she giggled, and raised her free arm to flex at her reflection.

There was just the beginning of an outline of hard muscle appearing from under the skin. Laughable, even; but it was a beginning and that was all that mattered to her.

“Alright, boys”, Hunter called, securing his own helmet in place. “We’re moving out”, he gestured towards the exit with his head.

“Sorry, Lady”, Wrecker shrugged, making to retrieve his helmet; but Dani beat him to it, slipping it off and handing it back reverently. “I’ll let you borrow it again when we get back”, he winked.

She gave him an amused smirk and sprung up to follow them to the exit.

Hunter was the last of the leaving party, and turned when she trotted up behind him.

“You—”

“I’m staying here, yes, yes”, she nodded, but still didn’t head back to the depths of the ship.

“Why are you following us, then?”, he tilted his head in confusion.

“To… wave you off?”, she mirrored his reaction, not sure if the action was unwelcome. Dani took a cautious step back.

“Ah”, he voiced, and it sounded more like an acknowledgement than something said out of awkwardness, so when he went on his way she followed, making a point of staying inside the ship, doing exactly what she had said she would do.

“Take care!”, she called out as they walked away.

Wrecker turned to wave back enthusiastically. Crosshair seemed to spare her a glance, but she couldn’t tell what emotion was behind it with his helmet on. Tech seemed to startle and gave a rushed wave back, but Hunter was already disappearing among the vegetation surrounding the clearing they had landed on, towards the mountain ridge in the distance.

It suddenly dawned on her that she was on an alien planet.

She wondered about the wildlife: the plants, the fauna, fungus, bacteria…!

“…Nope!”, Dani halted the step she had been about to take out of the _Havoc Marauder_ and turned on her heel, closing the door behind her.

“Did you see her back there _flexing_?”, Wrecker cooed.

“Forget that. Are we positive she won’t be stealing our ship?”, Crosshair nudged Hunter’s side nervously.

“I can assure you her illiteracy—regarding Aurebesh, at least—isn’t faked, so that supports the hypothesis that she had never left her planet before, and a planet where space travel isn’t common is unlikely to put resources to learn to pilot at disposition of the young.”

“She reminded me of myself at her age…”

“Wreck, she’s probably older than all of us. And at your equivalent of ‘her age’, you were already buffed”, Crosshair pointed out.

“She can get buffed too! She’s got the spirit!”

“Actually, she would possible have to work twice as hard as a normal male human to get a muscular built similar to yours. I’ve been reading on women, since we have no education or experience on them at all, and I’ve read that they have lower levels of testosterone, what would make it more difficult for her to gain muscle… And since you are genetically engineered to be this way, she’ll have to work four times harder than you to get there.”

“Why would you need to read on women? She’s a person, not a whole different species”, the sniper rolled his eyes.

“Well, somebody _has_ to know these things, since they have very different experiences! I read that once a month, they—”

“Blah, blah. She’s a person with different pronouns. That’s it.”

“Not quite! I’ve read some things that I couldn’t ever imagine happening naturally to a human, but turns out the chromosomes XX come with a set of, uh, organs AND events, that would explain why choosing a template with sexual chromosomes XY was the best option, economically speaking, becau—”

“Enough chatter”, Hunter cut them. “Head on the game, boys.”

Bold words from the guy who was spacing out hardcore five seconds ago.

“Let’s run over this again.”

“We go in, we take what we need, and we blow it up. Same old, same old”, Wrecker rolled his eyes and head before falling into alert position.

“It’s not”, Tech chimed in. “By all means, the emergency supplies beacon has no business sitting here, far from the frontlines. It might have been scavenged or stolen, but we do have a right to take it back. It’ll have useful stuff.”

“Great. Extra rations to feed our hitch-hiker.”

“The supplies didn’t get here by themselves, guys”, Hunter reminded them, “Stay alert.”

They fell into silence as they kept moving towards the mountain ridge, where the beacon was taking them.

It had been a very weird few days: with Dani’s chatter adding to Tech’s and Wrecker’s and her fluttering presence that wasn’t entirely uncomfortable, but still it changed the rhythm they were used to having. Because the teen had been there, they had waited for her to go to sleep to do the debriefing of the mission when they would have talked and planned as soon as they received their orders. It was a small change, but a change nonetheless, and Hunter was keeping an eye out in case it unsettled his brothers.

But now, here; with all of them together and heading for their objective, it was like nothing had changed at all. Nothing had a reason to. Their job, their life, was still the same.

And they were hella good at it.

“We’re approaching the signal”, Tech reported, and the others immediately readied their blasters.

Hunter signed a halt and they ducked behind the bushes. About twenty meters away, a metal door was framed in the rocky mountain side. The Sergeant closed his eyes under his helmet to focus, noticing how his vod’e simultaneously held their breath to help along.

“I don’t hear any electronics in the outside. Tech?”

“Hm. My primary scans don’t show any security cameras either.”

“Weird”, Crosshair noted.

Not that it really mattered: they would have charged to it even if there was a literal holo call going on at the front door, but the lack of any surveillance was indeed suspicious. It could be that this planet didn’t have enough resources to have such technology in a remote spot like this was, but years of training and a life-time of experience made you be warier of your surroundings, and it was that wariness that usually kept you alive.

“Move in”, Hunter gave the all clear.

He was the first to step out of cover, but Tech quickly scurried past him to kneel beside the control pad by the door, attaching cables from his own hardware to it; while the other three watched his back as the slicer worked.

They scanned the vegetation surrounding them. A faint breeze shook branches and leaves, covering potential movements.

Something was amiss. Either this was going to be their easiest mission ever, or it was a—

Hunter heard the building voltage coming from behind them.

“Tech—!”, he tried to warn, turning around and stretching a hand towards his brother.

“Kriff”, he breathed out.

The explosion sent them off their feet, but luckily not by much. They were used enough to those that they were scrambling upright as soon as the shockwave had passed them.

“Tech!”, Crosshair called as Hunter went back to scanning the bushes and Wrecker hurled forwards, ready to become a shield between the door and his downed vod.

Tech groaned from where he lay on his back, hazy eyes squinting at the sniper as he bent over him.

“Door was…rigged…”, he mumbled out.

Crosshair glanced at Wrecker’s looming back. His lack of movement and noises were a clear indication that no hostiles had engaged.

“Yeah, we saw”, he huffed a worried laugh, turning to check on Hunter, who wasn’t moving either. “Sarge?”

“Clear”, he reported. “How’s he?”

“’M fine…”, Tech made to sit up, but his arms trembled with the effort and his eyes started to roll up.

“Yeah, how about no?”, Crosshair gently pushed him back down.

His armour was quite scorched, but it had done its job. He couldn’t hear any abnormalities in Tech’s breathing; just elevated heartbeat and dizziness with physical weakness. Probably a concussion.

He was lucky the charge had been a small one.

Hunter considered. Normally, they would tow their injured brother with them until they were done with the mission or hole him up somewhere safe, but with that explosive trap they couldn’t take any chances, and the _Havoc Marauder_ was relatively close.

“Wrecker”, he called over his shoulder. “Take Tech back to the ship. We’ll wait for you before continuing the raid.”

“You better”, he huffed, slowly walking backwards, still keeping an eye on the dark corridor beyond the mangled door.

“Cross”, the Sergeant called.

“I’m on it”, he said, kneeling to aim his rifle comfortably towards the darkness.

“Hey, vod”, Wrecker carefully picked Tech up. The slicer groaned again, trying to hold onto his armour. “You’re okay. ‘Have to make a run for it, tell me if the bumping gets too bad.”

“I’ll just… puke on you…”, Tech attempted a smile, head lolling.

“No, thanks”, Wrecker snorted, and glanced at Crosshair and Hunter, who were indeed posted and waiting for him, before making his way back to the ship.

With his heavy steps, Hunter didn’t notice the rustle of people following the path back to the _Havoc Marauder_.

Dani had been indulging in some dancing in the wide space of the cockpit. The Bad Batchers weren’t the only ones whose life-style had given an unexpected turn, and despite the exercise Wrecker made sure she had, dancing was a totally different thing. And she was too shy to just start dancing in a ship with four commandos.

Still, she had an ear out in case she heard the door opening. Didn’t want to get caught in the act and end up dying of embarrassment.

So when she heard the door swish open, she paused the music and headed to check on her hosts.

“Hi! That was quick! How wa—“, she started to ask, but nobody came her way.

That was weird. Why wouldn’t they walk towards the galley or cockpit and instead head for the gym and… medbay…? “Hello?”, she called, voice shaky as she walked faster, coming to a stop in front of the open door of the medbay and almost flattening her face against Wrecker’s chest plate.

“Oh. Hey”, he greeted haltingly.

“What happened?”, she asked, eyes wide in uncertainty as she stepped out of his personal space and leaned to a side to try and see inside the room.

“Uh, rigged door”, he stepped to the side so she could see Tech, figuring that it would do no good to try and hide it from her. “He’ll be fine, but I gotta go. You stay with him, yeah?”, he nudged her softly, half in a friendly gesture and half to check if she was freezing in front of the situation.

“Y-Yeah”, she managed to stutter out.

Wrecker studied her for a moment. The kid had tensed up and seemed a bit stiff, but she was responsive and looked receptive to verbal prompts.

Like a shiny in their first battle, more or less.

He decided that that was enough for now, giving her an encouraging nod and patting her shoulder before turning and heading back out.

“Be careful!”, Luna called after him.

“ _They_ need to be careful!”, he called back over his shoulder, letting out an almost mad cackle as he ran off.

Dani gulped down her nerves and closed the door, letting out a shaky exhale.

Okay, okay: Wrecker had said Tech was fine and she just had to keep him company. That was easy. She could do that.

Ducky hurried back to the medbay and sat at a stool placed there, rolling up to his side.

“Hey”, she said softly, resting her hand on his and wondering if it would be okay for her to squeeze it.

Tech’s face turned towards her voice, eyes blinking rapidly behind his goggles.

“Hey…”, he slurred back, eyelids dropping.

“Do you need me to get you anything? Water, a blanket? Take your boots off?”, she offered, feeling angsty.

Tech mumbled a clear negative, trailing off with unintelligibly things. If he was trying to give her an explanation on to why he didn’t want or couldn’t have the things she listed, he might as well stop because she wasn’t understanding shit. If that was because of his mumbling or her lack of experience with listening to Basic, she didn’t know.

“Okay, okay; I get it”, she said and patted his hand, even when she didn’t.

Still, that seemed to calm him down as his head went lax on the pillow.

Ducky let out a sigh. She didn’t even know if it was a relieved sigh or just a way to get rid of pent-up nervousness. It was fine, tho. Tech was fine. She just had to keep him company until the others came back.

She took a moment to look around the room, trying to see if there was anything familiar to her. As far as she could tell, the only familiar thing at sight was the bed. She stood up and went to check the drawers and cabinets, curious. She had never explored this room because there had been no reason for her to be in it, but since she was there and it seemed like Tech was stuck there too, she might as well get acquainted with the items and distribution. She carefully repositioned Tech’s helmet, which had been left on a table by Wrecker, to peek inside the lowest drawers. She perked up at the sight of bandages and compresses. At least that was universal, it seemed.

The next drawer contained all sort of tablets and pills, labelled with symbols that even when she managed to read she couldn’t relate to anything she knew. A cabinet had folded bags and tubes in it. Dani betted for some sort of IV or transfusion kit.

Another cabinet seemed to be devoted to cleaning products. She wasn’t going to check, but she thought it was a good guess. Another drawer had some sort of tubes in it. Maybe medicine in gel or soothing creams. The next one she needed both hands to drag out, uncovering a multitude of metal tools: scissors, pliers of different sizes, needles, stitches…

Yep. Pretty well equipped. That was reassuring, but it was also… not.

A shudder ran down her spine, her vision blacking out for a second to be replaced with white spots. She could immediately tell which one was Tech by its proximity to her and how… how it felt. Somehow. But there were other dots near and coming closer, right outside the ship, and she _did not know them_. Dani didn’t know how, but she was sure it wasn’t her hosts.

Her regular sight came back, and her hands were trembling.

“Tech”, she croaked, hurrying to get back to his side. “Tech, someone’s coming!”, she shook his shoulders slightly, but he barely stirred. “Tech, you have to call Hunter or something! Someone’s coming!”, she stressed, fear rising.

But still, he didn’t rouse.

 _Okay. Okay, it’s fine: we’re in, they’re out. There’s no way they can get the ship open from the outside if it doesn’t belong to them, right? The others will come back and they’ll deal with it. It’ll be fine, It’ll be fine—_ , she chanted to herself.

The noise of piercing metal gave away that it wouldn’t.

Dani jumped out of the room and leaned over the corridor, spotting sparks and the ever-growing red-hot glow around the entrance door.

“Shit!”, she hissed, ducking back inside and palming the door shut, breath coming in panicked pants. “Tech! Tech, please, wake up!”, she tried to shake him awake, but he only groaned, his head lolling with the movement.

Ducky’s heart was hammering inside her ribcage, feeling like it would break her ribs from the inside out. She spotted his wristcomm, still wrapped around his forearm, and she grabbed his arm to pull it closer to her, but she couldn’t figure out how to use it. She had only seen him pushing buttons at random, and what if—

 _Actually, you know what?_ , her frantic mind went; and she pushed ALL the keys, because what’s the worst that could happen? Some shady guys would know where they were and force the ship’s door open?

Prrrfff.

“Clear!”, Crosshair called.

“Argh, this one’s clear too!”, Wrecker lamented.

Hunter turned briskly to sweep another empty room. This one, at least, had a crate at the center of it.

“There’s something here!”, he called over comms, and not a minute later Crosshair was beside him and Wrecker was watching their back.

“Could be rigged too”, the sniper muttered, not one to forget traps and treachery. “I don’t think it’s worth it.”

He had a point, but…

“Let’s just build up some cover and shoot it, if there’s a charge the impact will set it o—”

They all received gibberish from Tech’s comm, the distress signal flashing over their arms.

“…Uh. Weird. Maybe Dani dropped it?”

Crosshair tensed up.

“There’s no one here”, he breathed out, helmet turning to face his Sergeant. “They want the kriffing ship.”

They abandoned the crate.

She felt sick. Cheers flooded the corridors when the door was forced open with a screeching swish, and then unfamiliar footsteps slammed down and echoed around the ship, setting her more on edge. She was half crouched between Tech and the door; too afraid to try and leave, too— too _something_ to try to hide by herself, to leave him alone while he was vulnerable. She couldn’t even tell what it was. More fear? Rage? It burned and kept her in place, it collided against the obvious fear and left her frozen where she was.

The steps came closer, and she was on the verge of tears. Dani took a step back towards Tech, placing a hand on his chest, risking a glance to confirm that, indeed: he didn’t look like he would be waking up anytime soon. The chirping of the panel on the other side of the door made her suck in a sharp breath, holding it as she pressed herself closer to the unconscious man, holding it and _please please we’re not here go away go away go away!!!! Not here not here not here not here—_

The door opened, and some sort of alien with buggy, beautiful starry eyes, antennae and protruding long mouth leaned in. Dani leaned back, a silent startled gasp dying in the back of her throat as her fingers clenched; ready to scream and fight even if it was the last thing she would ever do—

The alien turned its head to both sides and leaned back to shout down the corridor.

“Some sort of medbay over here!”, they called.

“Leave it be, we’ll check it out later! Let’s get off this rock!”, somebody else replied.

And just like that, the invader stepped out, leaving the door open and Dani; wide-eyed and frozen.

She stood like that for a long moment, until her lungs couldn’t take it anymore and they let out the breath she had been holding with harsh pants.

They hadn’t seen them. How…?

_—get off this rock—_

They wanted to leave the planet. They wanted to steal the ship— They were probably the ones who hurt Tech—

Dani became hyperaware of the weight of the pocketknife over her leg. She rested her hand over it and turned to look at Tech. Sleeping. Safe.

For now.

She gulped, feeling strangely detached as she slipped the pocketknife into her hand and unsheathed the blade.

“Shit!”, Crosshair hissed, seeing the door forced open before any of his brothers. “They’re in, they’re in!”

“Kriff!”, Hunter spat, willing his legs to run faster as he smelled blood.

They barrelled inside, caution to the wind, and scattered. Wrecker immediately bolted for the medbay, but Hunter sucked in a harsh breath and went in the other direction, almost chocking on the iron scent. Crosshair seemed torn for a moment, but bolted after the Sergeant. He collided against his back and would have toppled him over if Hunter hadn’t braced himself on the ledge of the entrance to the cockpit.

“What…?”, the sniper started to complain, leaning to watch over his squadmate’s shoulder, and promptly froze, too. “Ssssssshiiiiiiiiiiiit…”

Five bodies lay on the floor, one of them right by their feet. Blood was sprayed on the walls, floor, and even the ceiling; giving away that arteries had been punctured or cut.

Dani stood in the middle of it all: wheezing, clothes splotched red, eyes far away and rudimentary blade clutched in her hand.

“Tech’s secure!”, Wrecker called in relief, almost sandwiching Crosshair between him and Hunter. “Wha—”

Her whole body shuddered and she pivoted in their direction, but her eyes didn’t quite meet theirs.

“Dani”, Hunter called carefully, slowly passing his blaster to Crosshair and taking a cautious step forward. She flinched hard, but recognition sparked in her eyes and she stood still. “Hey, kid. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

Her eyes jumped around the middle distance, looking confused and scared, only pants leaving her throat.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, you’re safe”, he approached her slowly, keeping an eye out for violent reactions. Wrecker and Crosshair knew better than to do sudden movements when faced with someone armed and in a state of shock, but if he wasn’t careful, he could get slashed. “Hey, look at me”, he called softly.

She grimaced, and then he remembered he was still wearing his helmet. Slowly, very slowly, he reached to slip it off and set it gently on the floor. She watched him do it, eyes following his every movement.

“That’s right. Can I have that?”, he pointed at her pocketknife with his head. “You don’t need it anymore. Can I put it down with my helmet?”

Dani choked a gasp and gulped, closing her eyes in an effort to regain control over her being. She wanted to move. She wanted to speak. She wanted to leave that room, but she was frozen.

She managed a nod.

“Alright”, Hunter gently cupped her hand and brought it higher, holding her wrist without gripping it.

Ducky tried to unclench her fingers around the pocketknife, but instead her whole arm twitched.

“I ca—I can’t…!”, she gasped, panicking.

“It’s okay, it’s okay: it’s just stiff muscles. Try to calm down and it’ll go away. I’m going to count, and you match your breathing to my pattern, okay? Her—”

He was just about to start, but Dani closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it go slowly as she gripped her forearm with her free hand, and then her fingers were twitching, easing up.

“Good. Very good”, the Sergeant encouraged.

He had to wonder if she had suffered panic attacks before. He hadn’t expected her to be able to come down of it with minimal guidance.

Soon he was able to ease the knife out of her hand, placing it on the ground as he had promised.

“There”, he declared.

Crosshair and Wrecker let out the breath they had been holding, now that the situation was disarmed, and moved deeper into the cockpit, trying not to crowd as they checked the bodies.

“Are you hurt?”, Hunter asked, carefully patting her down.

“N-No…”, she replied shakily.

Dani’s arms and legs were trembling. Indeed: she didn’t appear to be injured.

“You wanna sit down?”, he stood up, holding her shoulders.

She nodded again, staring at their feet.

Hunter carefully guided her to one of the chairs and sat her down.

Wrecker started hauling the corpses out.

“…I’ll get something to clean this”, Crosshair grumbled, and disappeared down the hallway.

“I-I’m sorry”, she trembled, hunching on herself and hooking her fists under her armpits. “I’m s-sorry…”

“Hey”, the Sergeant kneeled in front of her. “You don’t have to apologize, okay? You defended the ship. You protected Tech. You were very brave, alright? You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Luna barely managed to hold his gaze for three seconds before looking down again, nodding numbly.

“I’m going to get you some water to drink and clean up, alright? Wait here.”

Hunter spared her one glance over his shoulder, wondering if he should take her knife with him, but she didn’t look aggressive: only shocked.

Bold bet considering she had somehow killed five adult Rodians and came out of the fight unscathed.

He almost tripped over Crosshair, eyes even more narrowed than normal as he held up Tech’s helmet.

“You have to see this”, he said, and walked away towards the medbay.

He followed briskly, letting out a sigh of relief when he was able to see with his own eyes that Tech was alright. Wrecker must have been outstripping his armour, but had stopped midway and was now leaning his back against a wall, eyes wide and lost in shocked thought.

“Wreck?”, he prompted, worried.

The big guy had been quick to cotton to their passenger. If he knew his brother well, discovering that she was more dangerous than she appeared should excite him, not leave him numb with shock; but if whatever had happened had shattered his trust—

Wrecker shook his head, snapping out of it.

“Just… play it again”, he told Crosshair, and he obliged, tampering with Tech’s ever-recording helmet to rewind the vid and project it on the medbay’s terminal.

They watched, wide-eyed, as Dani froze and turned to Tech, trying to rouse him to no avail, and just standing there, becoming more and more frantic until just—

Vanishing. She had Tech just popped out of the image, as if they had never been there, and then one of the dead Rodian’s head came into view, looked around, and left.

Dani and Tech flashed back into existence, and she looked as dumbfounded as they felt. She gulped, turned to Tech, turned back and retrieved the knife from her pants’ pocket, and flashed out of the recording again.

Crosshair paused it, crossing his arms angrily to scowl at his Sergeant.

“I told you it was suspicious.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, seeing people who left kudos on Ducky or any of my other fics leaving kudos here too: ah, yes. my fans. I love them very much  
> Me, seeing new people leave kudos here: *aggresively checks if they are reading Ducky*


	6. A Force To Be Reckoned With

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Force, mistrust, and Kaldereta

“Can you do it again?”, Tech asked, still blinking weirdly to focus but too curious to fall asleep.

As easy as breathing, Ducky winked out of existence.

“Wow! How do you do it? Is it a feature of your species? You can camouflage?”

“What? No!”, she replied weakly, still pretty out of it herself. “People don’t just… turn invisible!”, she swayed a bit on the seat Hunter had settled her, and leaned back on it, reappearing to their eyes.

She hadn’t quite been able to get up since then, not even when Wrecker wheeled in a mop and poured a product on the blood staining the floor and she had felt bad enough to try and offer to clean it herself, only to remember that the floor was stained because _she had killed five people, stabbed them in the neck or deep enough in their legs to reach important arteries and stepped away from them, hearing them gurgle, watching them bleed out—_

“Funny, because you happen to be doing just that”, Crosshair deadpanned, chewing on a toothpick.

So they had those in space, huh.

“I don’t know how I did that”, she sobbed, curling on herself. “I just wanted to hide…”

Tears threaten to spill from her eyes, and the Bad Batchers jerk.

“Are you _sure_ that your species doesn’t do that?”, Tech insisted, but it was in fact an attempt at distracting her.

“Yes, Tech!”, she snarled, and the anger managed to suck in the tears. The clones relaxed minutely, believing the crisis averted for now. “I think I would know if that were the case!”

“Hey, maybe you turn invisible to other species but can see each other!”, Wrecker tried to argue; and even tho it could be possible, it was impossible to prove at the moment.

Dani slumped back on the seat with a sigh and a frown, looking away as she hugged her own arms. She felt scared and confused, and the way they were acting all edgy around her, specially Crosshair, was making her think that they didn’t trust her anymore over a thing she didn’t know she could do.

On the other side, the commandoes were on edge for two reasons:

One: they have picked up a seemingly harmless girl who just _murdered five people off the bat and could turn invisible_. Whether they wanted it or not, the implication that she could do the same to them was there and it was more than unnerving. On the other hand, she had killed to protect Tech, and that was something Hunter felt they couldn’t hold against her; not him, at least.

Chances were that if the raiders had spotted them, they would have shot them dead.

Two: crying. It’s not that—It just—Was she _prone_ to crying? Did nat-borns cry a lot? They had learned from very young that crying was bad. Crying meant that the trainers and handlers were going to be mad at you, they were going to punish you, they were going to take you away to never be seen away.

They were not on Kamino now, and they _knew_ that; but they couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the shudder that went up their spine as someone showed signs of tears, couldn’t avoid to look around and try to hide the crying person away until they regained control over themselves.

How were they going to handle it if Dani’s dam broke?

Hunter saved that question for later. At the moment, the crisis was averted. One step at a time.

“Maybe she’s just Force-sensitive”, Crosshair scoffed, rolling his eyes.

He had obviously said it in mockery, but his teammates jerked in realisation.

“No”, the sniper blurted out immediately. “No, don’t take this seriously—”

“Actually—“, Tech started.

“—No—”

“—at’s the only think that makes sense right now.”

“The Jedi don’t do _that_!”

“Vod, what do you know about what Jedi can and can’t do?”, Wrecker nudged him, shrugging.

“What do _you_ know about it?”

“What are you even talking about?”, Dani whined, their voices almost dizzying her.

“…Ah. You don’t know about that either”, Wrecker mumbled, eyes wide as he blinked at her.

“Wha?”, she dared to ask, already dreading the conversation to follow.

“There’s… this people, in this galaxy”, Hunter started slowly, glancing at Tech for help.

“They say there’s this energy, around them and all over everything and everyone: the Force.”

“Something like it flows through everything and everyone”, Hunter added in an afterthought.

Dani just blinked in confusion, for the moment.

“Anyways: they are practically superhuman people! Using the Force, they can lift heavy objects without touching them, or heal grave wounds, or sense dangers—”

_Sense dangers_

Was that what that weird vision was?, she wondered for a moment. But no. She scoffed.

“Sounds fake, but okay.”

“Says the one who turned herself and _him_ invisible”, Crosshair scoffed back, pointing at Tech with his thumb.

Well. He had a point.

“True! Can you do that again?!”, Tech asked, perking up in excitement.

Ducky exhaled quietly, head tilting minutely. She was tired, and confused, and only wanted to go to sleep and wake up in a normal day and discover this was just a very lucid dream, but she was also curious.

Cloaking herself comes as natural. Cloaking Tech again takes a bit more of effort, but she manages quickly enough.

“Woah”, she blurted out, finally able to watch her power in action.

“Amazing”, Hunter narrowed his eyes, hand extending slowly until he’s gripping the slicer’s shoulder. “I know he’s here, but I can’t see him.”

“You _know_?”, Dani questioned, and the others tensed for a second.

“Hunter has… good intuition”, Wrecker jumped, and the others glanced at him with pleased approval, even Tech as he faded back into sight.

“Ah”, it’s the only thing she can say to that.

“Anyways, best way to check if you’re a Jedi would be if you can lift something without touching it!”, Wrecker beamed.

“Technically, she isn’t a Jedi because she isn’t part of the Order. I think the right term would be Force-sensitive”, Tech nodded to himself, “You might be onto something, Wrecker, but even Jedis need years of training to lift things. I’ve never heard of Jedis _or_ Siths turning invisible, and you seem to be able to cloak yourself off the bat, but I doubt levitating things will be that easy. Maybe we can gather som—”

He made to stand, but Crosshair stopped him, giving him a stern look.

“Orrrrrrrrrr… I’ll sleep some and then we’ll get to it”, he sighed, bringing a hand to the gauze tapped to his head, suddenly looking exhausted.

“Need a hand?”, Hunter offered quietly.

Tech accepted it to stand up, but refused further help to walk to his bunk on his own, lying down with a tired sigh, eyes slipping closed.

Dani stayed silent, and was considering leave so they could all rest when Crosshair whipped his head around and pinned her in place with a wary glare.

“Now”, he growled, and started to stalk towards her. “You better answer some questions and you _better_ say the truth!”

“Cross!”, Hunter moved to grip his arm as Ducky cowered.

“Why did you have Kaminoan tech?! Huh?! Is this really the first time you’re in this galaxy?!”

“I-I don’t even know what that means!”, she tried to defend herself, but her voice shook in fear.

“The transmitter you used! It was made of technology from Kamino, the same planet we come from!”

She leaned back in shock, not exactly knowing what to do with that information.

“I-I don’t know. I guess my father had it…”

“So you’re father’s a thief!”

“He’s not!”, she snarled, leaning forwards as the accusation set her anger on fire.

“Enough, both of you!”, Hunter commanded, and Luna found herself flinching at the power in his voice. “Cross, a word. Dani, you can go to your room.”

She didn’t need to be told twice.

Crosshair pivoted towards him.

“’A word’? Really?”

“She’s already stressed. This is _not_ the moment to interrogate her and thrown useless accusations. Understood?”, the Sergeant said lowly.

Crosshair scowled around his toothpick.

“She’s dangerous. _More_ dangerous than I could have imagined, than _any of you_ expected! If what she says is true, her father is from Kamino, but she’s obviously NOT half-Kaminoan. And we’re not locking her in the closet?”, he growled, arms crossed.

“No”, Hunter didn’t miss a beat. “No, we’re not.”

“Whatever”, the sniper scoffed. “I’ll take first watch then, I guess.”

There was truly no reason for Crosshair to spend all night up, watching the entrance to the cockpit almost unblinking. Hunter had heard her crying again, panting and pacing and hiding under her blanket and pillow; but not knocking anything over or punching or kicking things.

Never becoming aggressive.

“I can sense her even when she’s cloaked”, he told his brother quietly, not moving from where he was lying down.

They both had the upper bunks: Cross liked perches, Wrecker was big and heavy and they felt safer that if a bunk were to collapse under his weight, there might as well be no-one sleeping bellow him; and Tech’s sleep-pattern was erratic, with him waking up to tinker with things until he tired himself out enough to go to sleep again. So, out of practicality, Hunter had the upper bunk.

They switched sometimes, but that was the general setting.

“And I still have her knife”, he added.

There was a beat of silence.

“And your vibroblades?”

“Stored and locked”, the Sergeant reassured.

He heard him setting his rifle down.

Hm. Progress.

“She lies.”

“I believe her when she says she didn’t know.”

“Why?”

Hunter didn’t have an immediate answer to that.

“She cries”, he finally said. “Every night, since she got onboard. She’s almost tachycardic. She reeked of fear when you yelled at her.”

“She could have attacked me.”

“But she didn’t”, he turned his head to look at his brother.

Crosshair was still facing the door, a leg dangling down the bedframe. It swung along with Wrecker’s wavering snores. His mouth was set in a thin line.

“I don’t like it”, was all he said

And Hunter got it. He really did: there was a stranger in their ship and it made him angsty. He also knew there wasn’t much he could do about that.

“Get some rest”, he sighed. “I’ll keep an ear out.”

Their gazes met, blinking at each other for a moment.

Crosshair laid down without another word, facing the wall. With another exhale, he slid his bandana over his eyes.

“How come _you_ aren’t excited?”, Wrecker had asked; but she had just looked away, pushing her breakfast around.

For a moment they had thought she wasn’t going to reply, but after pressing her lips in almost a frustrated growl, she spoke.

“I’d be excited if you weren’t scared of me”, she choked out, eyes shining with held back tears.

The brutal honesty was still shocking to them.

“I’m not scared!”, Wrecker blurted out when he recovered.

“Me neither”, Tech added, still surprised. “I mean, it’s an ability highly regarded in the assassination business and that thought is kinda chilling, but…”, he shrugged, not finishing the sentence.

“You’re just a kid”, Hunter said, and he had meant well, the thought almost enlightening him; but he became aware of how patronizing it sounded as soon as it left his mouth.

He glanced to find both Crosshair and Dani glaring at him.

“I didn’t mean—”

Dani stood up.

“Leave it. I didn’t say it so you’d try to make me feel better about it.”

She left. Not that she had many places to go, since they were back in space and headed for another planet. But her voice had been the coldest they had heard her speak.

“And I thought _you_ were dramatic…”, Cross rolled his eyes, glancing at Hunter.

He had hoped to get a huff or a smirk, but instead he found himself being glared at by his brothers. “What?”, he asked, on the defensive.

“Did you _have to_?”, Tech asked, clearly pissed off.

“What? Now it’s _my_ fault she is moody?”

“Don’t threaten her”, Wrecker rumbled.

“I haven’t—”

“Don’t. Threaten her”, the tank stood up and left.

Crosshair scowled at his retreating form, a frustrated growl stuck in his throat.

“Cross—”

“If you’re going to tell me to get all mellow with her like y’all doing, save it!”

Hunter blinked at him for a moment, expression unreadable before he sighed.

“You’re trying to watch our backs and I thank you for it”, he said, to the sniper’s surprise. “She _is_ a stranger and you’re keeping your guard up. I appreciate it. But please: unless you see something clearly wrong, don’t antagonize her.”

“She saved me. Saved the ship”, Tech added with a shrug. “Looks kinda traumatized about it too.”

“Looks can be deceiving”, Crosshair pointed out, crossing his arms.

“Let’s look some more before deciding then, yeah?”, Hunter nudged his elbow lightly, lips twitching into a small smile as a peace offering.

He rolled his eyes, but deflated a bit.

“Alright…”

Wrecker finished setting several objects of different shape and weight on the dusty floor of the planet. Dani watched him from where she was sitting on the ship’s stairs, trying and failing to hide her interest.

Hunter and Tech walked past her, armour hidden under dusty grey cloaks.

“We’re going to the town to get something to fix the door”, Hunter announced.

“And get you some shots”, Tech added, looking at Dani. “I would ask that you don’t approach people and avoid touching anything outside the ship. Wouldn’t want you to die of common cold”, he added in an afterthought.

She chuckled weakly, giving him a thumbs-up. It was a terrifying but hilarious thought.

“Take care”, Ducky waved, because she had been raised with manners.

This time, Hunter waved back, too.

The sound of boots hitting the metal stairs startled her and she turned to see Crosshair at the top. She scowled a bit, watching him for any sign of hostility, but he just spared her a glance and jumped down the side of the staircase instead of stepping down, carrying what seemed to be a sniper rifle as he leaned against the hull of the ship to watch.

“Alright! I’m done!”, Wrecker called their attention, dusting off his hands with a satisfied smile. “Try to lift those!”, he gestured to the unloaded blaster, boot, empty crate, medium-sized ball and the gonk droid.

“I’m… not sure how this is supposed to work”, Dani smiled nervously.

“You sit there. And you try to lift those. Maybe you manage!”, Wrecker gestured from her to the objects.

“Yeah, sure. That’s like if I told you to go in the water and try to breathe. Maybe you manage!”

“Don’t give him ideas. Just try.”

“Try _what_? Lifting things with my mind?!”

“Yeah”, Crosshair shrugged. “That’s what I heard.”

“Y’all pulling my leg. This is a joke.”

“You literally turned invisible and are assuring us your people doesn’t do that. Do _you_ have a better explanation?”, he snarked without looking up from loading his rifle.

Dani huffed. Lifting things with her mind. As if she hadn’t already tried to do that as a baby.

“Aw, come on! Just try! Please?”, Wrecker insisted, and she could have never imagined that such a big man could pull off that high-calibre of puppy eyes.

“…Alright”, she mumbled, and narrowed her eyes at the boot, just… basically imagining it going up in the air.

Was that how it was supposed to work?

Anyways, her thoughts didn’t seem to have much of an effect on the material world.

“I think you have to, like, point your arm at it or something”, Wrecker tried to be helpful, rubbing his nape in thought.

“Hm”, she hummed, doubtful, but even if this was all a prank, she had nothing to lose by it.

Dani raised her arm lazily, though from the outside it could even seem reverent. The indifference in her face made her look like she possessed an experience that she didn’t have, as if she were about to do something she did every day.

With arm extended and fingers splayed, she tried again.

Something happened.

It felt like pressure around her head: not painful, but there. Then she noticed vibrations around her fingers, could sense them moving through the air and vibrating around the boot, pressing against it—

A loud bang happened very close to her and Dani lost all concentration with a startled scream.

“Cross!”, Wrecker groaned in complain.

“What?”, the sniper shrugged, eyeing his target in the distance.

This far away, he had hit bullseye.

Obviously.

He turned with a satisfied smirk to encounter Dani staring at him with wide, curious eyes.

“What?”, he repeated, off-put by the way she was looking at him.

“What did you shoot at?”

“Some stump…”

“How far away?”

He turned to eye it, calculating.

“Almost a kilometre, I’d say.”

And it _was_ a guess, but he had… good profundity perception, to say something.

“Whoa! And you hit it?!”

“Of course”, he huffed, but that didn’t deter the wonder in Dani’s eyes.

“Do you hold your breath when you shoot? Do you have to account for the wind? Does your helmet have zoom? Does your _rifle_ have zoom? Is it wise to waste ammunition on a stump? Or do you have special ammo to practice?”

She decided to leave it there, noticing how Crosshair tensed up with each question, not seeming willing to answer.

“You really know nothing of war and military?”

If this was an act, it was a very denigrating one, in his opinion.

“Only what I’ve seen in movies. And I’m told that’s not a reliable source, so…”, she shrugged, eyeing the rifle.

She did wonder how it felt to hold it.

“Lady”, Wrecker called, pointing at the objects sitting on the ground, his eyes imploring.

“But this is more interesting, Wrecker!”, she implored back, and he seemed to consider, eyeing the blaster on the ground.

“You’ve never held one of those?”, he pointed at it.

Ducky shook her head.

He kicked it up, letting it spin on the air before catching it without even looking at it.

Her mouth parted in an awed smile, and Wrecker couldn’t help but grin at it.

“Wrecker”, Crosshair warned lowly. “Don’t give her a weapon…”

“It’s unloaded, Cross!”, the other refuted, and walked to the stairs where Dani was sitting. “Here”, he offered it to her.

She sprung to her feet, suddenly insecure. She looked from the weapon to Wrecker, eyes full of hesitation and hands slow at reaching for it, but Wrecker only gave an encouraging nod.

“Dominant hand on the trigger. The other holds the blaster further down”, he instructed.

Dani had to part her legs to balance the weight of the blaster.

“It’s heavier than I thought!”, she squeaked, the metal feeling foreign in her arms. She refused to rest a finger over the trigger.

“And it doesn’t have ammo in it”, the sniper now mocked.

“If you can manage, so can I”, she snapped back with narrowed eyes before sticking her tongue out to him.

Wrecker laughed loudly at that, to Ducky’s ease.

“Wait”, he dried tears of laughter and moved his hands over Dani’s, completely covering them up. “Try to hold it like this”, he suggested, repositioning them.

She had to brace herself again for the shift in balance.

“Uh… maybe just grab it the way you are the steadiest.”

“Legs apart”, Cross called, not even looking as he took another shot. “And flex your knees a bit.”

Dani blinked at him, wary, but slowly eased into position and tried the hold Wrecker had suggested. She did feel a bit steadier than before.

“Does it hurt your arms and chest when you shoot?”, she asked Wrecker.

“Not with armour. But it would without it, eventually.”

“You would probably break a rib”, Crosshair chimed in.

“Not if we get her armour!”

“Not if we get her a smaller weapon”, Tech walked up to them from where he had left, unholstering his DC to spin it a couple times before re-holstering it.

“Not that she needs it. Back already?”, the sniper asked, voice grave as if he expected trouble.

“I found some of the most basic vaccines really quick. I thought to brought them back to administer them: the sooner the better”, he stuck his hand on a pouch of his belt and waved a bulky, cylindrical grey thing in the air.

Wrecker took the blaster from her as he approached.

“Did you touch something? Did you wash your hands? Did you walk around?”

“Didn’t leave the stairs”, she assured him, eyeing the thingy suspiciously.

Tech glanced at Wrecker for confirmation, who gave a sharp nod.

“Someone who listens. Finally”, he sighed in bliss. “Anyways. If you would tilt your head up…”

“Why?”, she asked, clueless.

Tech blinked at her.

“You’ve never been vaccinated before?”

“Yes I have”, she replied, almost offended.

“Then… Oh. You don’t inject on your necks?”

“No? That sounds creepy and uncomfortable. We do it on our arms”, she pressed a finger against the spot on her arm where the injections always went in.

In contrast, they seemed creeped out by the idea of injections in the arms.

“That’s where IVs go.”

“Arms are long. There’s plenty of space”, she deadpanned.

“The effect is quicker when dispensed in the neck”, Tech argued rationally.

“Well. I guess. If you’re sure about it…”, she shrugged, still visibly uncomfortable but not looking like she was going to argue more about it.

“I am. It’s going to be just a tiny prick”, he reached up with a hand to gently tilt her head and rested the hypo against her neck, noticing how she tensed up. “Relax.”

“Dude you’re about to inject me in the neck for the first time in my life, just get over wi—”

Said prick caught her off-guard, making her yelp and step away from the hypo.

“Done”, Tech smiled, glad that that was done with. “You should still wait a couple days before going to crowded places, and you are not immune to _all_ diseases, but it will save you from a handful of them.”

“Thanks”, she said, rubbing her neck thoughtfully. Truth is: it hadn’t hurt as much as she thought it would.

“I’m going back to help Hunter. I thought I could grab some ingredients so you can cook us something?”

“Uh, sure. But I wouldn’t know what to tell you to buy…”

“I’ll send you pictures of what I find with info on it.”

“I, uh, don’t have a… comm?”

“Ah, true. I’ll send it to Wrecker’s datapad, then. Remember me to link your phone to our comms and holonet when I get back”, he nodded to himself.

“Cool. Thanks.”

“You’re good to walk around a bit too, as long as you don’t start shoving dirt in your mouth or kissing wildlife”, Tech chuckled.

“Hell, yeah, I _think_ I can do that”, Dani grinned, happily jumping off the stairs and onto the ground. Realisation struck him. “Guys, look!”, she beamed, and pointed at herself. “I’m an alien!”

“Okay. I can make _Kaldereta_. It’s a bit spicy, if that’s alright?”

“PLEASE DO”, Wrecker jumped immediately, and Dani moved to the kitchenette in the galley, carefully recalling the preparation.

“How does your heater work?”

“Like this”, Tech quickly demonstrated. “And this are the settings.”

“Hm, alright. I need a knife.”

“Here”, Hunter extracted one from a cabinet. “What do you need to cut?”

She was slightly surprised when they offered to help with the cooking, but also pleased. Later she thought that maybe they did it because they didn’t want her to be holding a knife or they thought she might try to poison them, but it felt… nice, to cook with someone else.

It brought memories.

“Will you… give me back my pocketknife?”, she asked haltingly as they put the food in the heater.

The Sergeant blinked at her, as if he had forgotten about it.

“It’s the only thing that I grabbed to protect myself and I, uh…”, she shrugged awkwardly.

“Of course. As long as you keep it away and there aren’t any incidents.”

Crosshair whipped his head towards him.

“We all have blades on us, Cross. It’s only fair”, he shrugged.

He could have strangled his own Sergeant right there.

“Does stabbing more intruders count as incident?”

“No”, Tech replied for him.

Hunter extracted the pocketknife from a hollow space in his vambrace and handed it to her. She turned it in her hands, noticing that it had been cleaned of blood.

“You don’t have vibroblades on your planet, or you couldn’t afford one?”, he asked as she pocketed her small blade.

“What’s that?”, she asked, because from the words she was imagining a hybrid of a knife and a vibrator and the mental image was _hilarious_ but she also hoped she was wrong for obvious reasons.

“Like this”, he said, and unsheathed the knife held in his vambrace.

She would have to ask him where to get one of those before she left. It was cool as fuck. The thought only intensified when he did something and the edge of the blade lighted up, red-hot.

“Woah!”, she beamed.

“I take you had never seen one before”, Hunter smiled, amused.

“It must be the shit to cut butter!”, Ducky grinned.

The others sputtered and snorted.

“Language”, the Sergeant tried to keep his composure.

Dani’s grin turned devilish.

“ _Kriff_!”, she blurted out, unashamed.

Hunter turned to Tech, narrowing his eyes at him.

“I didn’t teach her that word”, he defended himself, and turned to Wrecker.

“Nuh huh! Wasn’t me!”, he shook his head and looked away, not being very convincing.

“I read it on the holonet!”, she grinned wider.

“What did we get ourselves into…”, Crosshair murmured to himself, holding his head in his hands.

“Honestly: I swear like a sailor and I don’t think any of you will be able to change that, but I’m sure we can reach a comprom—”

The timer ringed, signalling that dinner was ready.

Dani sprung out of her seat and went to fetch it, serving the meat with the closest-thing-they-had-found-to-a-tomato sauce.

“Okay… I hope it came out alright…”, she mused, a bit unsure herself of tasting it. She was so used to the red of the dish, it was weird seeing it green: it felt like the tomatoes used weren’t ripe enough to be picked.

But still: by what Tech had told her and the texture she had been able to feel herself, it shouldn’t be too different.

And it was her first time eating genuinely alien food!

So she just chewed on it.

“…So?”, Tech prompted, a scoop on his own fork. “Is it like you wanted it?”

Ducky went totally still, eyes wide in shock.

“Dani?”, Hunter asked, a thread of worry laced in his voice.

She set down the spoon on her plate, closing her eyes.

“I fucking FORGOT to put SALT in it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crosshair is trying very hard to figure out why his bros are so unconcerned with having an armed invisible teen aboard  
> The other three are too concerned looking at her and going: ...baby........
> 
> The temptation of making them get along off the bat is strong, but... I cannot do that. I do not intend to make Crosshair get mellow with my OC, at most they will establish companionship with hints of "hey I know I'm not typically loving to you but I would die for you" sprinkled around
> 
> I think I will pop out what might be a revelation if you are new to this series, if not; just know that the revelation might be kinda hysterical in this AU


	7. I Am Your Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No: non of the Bad Batchers are Dani's father, but I couldn't pass up the chance to use that as the title

“And this is bacta”, Tech goes on with his thorough explanation on everything in the medbay. “To be applied over wounds: helps with tissue regeneration, and therefore is used for almost everything.”

“Cool. What’s it made of?”

“Hm. It’s mostly a mix of two different symbiotic bacteria. For grave injuries, the patient is usually fully submerged in a bacta tank.”

“Ugh, in a tube of goo?”, Dani grimaced.

“That’s one way to put it, yes”, he replied without looking up from sorting material. “Not that you get to feel it much; if you are bad enough to be in a bacta tank, you’re sedated for sure.”

“And it really works with everything?”

“Yes: burns, cuts, lacerations, bruises… even broken bones and internal damage.”

“I’m calling it Magic Healing Goo”, Ducky grinned. “Magic Goo for short.”

Tech snorted.

“I find ‘bacta’ shorter and more practical, but you do you. Anyways, this is a cauterizer” he lifted a pen-like device and handed it to her. “I think its function is obvious, but don’t hesitate to ask me to explain if you need to.”

“Show me how it works?”

He took the device back and twisted it a bit, making sure she could see what he was doing.

“It’s active as long as you keep this button pressed. This is the tip that has to be aimed at the wound. You run it over, and then apply cooling gel or bacta before covering it with gauze or bandages.”

“Gotcha”, she nodded her understanding.

“Those are the painkiller tablets. We also have them in fluids for emergencies, but, uh, I don’t think you’ll be needing those. Anyways: tell us if you take tablets or pills for any reason so we can restock.”

“Sure.”

“You’ve already seen hypos”, he showed her the one he had discharged in her neck.

“Ours are longer and thinner and transparent”, she frowned. “How do you check that there aren’t any air bubbles in it before injecting?”

“It makes vacuum itself.”

“Oh. Fancy”, she tilted her head.

That would explain the extra bulk.

“The terminal here runs basic scans and had a large list of diagnosis. It’s pretty easy to understand, if you can read Aur—”

He trailed off at Dani’s grimace, but before he could ask what was the matter, she took a sharp intake and her shotgun sneeze bounced off the walls of the _Havoc Marauder_.

“…Bless you.”

“Thanks”, she coughed, raising her head from where she had ducked it behind her elbow.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but maybe since we’re here we should make a quick blood analysis to make sure that, you know… aren’t about to die.”

“Sounds good to me”, Ducky grimaced, extending an arm and eyeing it suspiciously. “Please tell me you aren’t going to stuck another needle in my neck.”

“Not for this.”

“Thank you”, she laughed nervously.

Tech picked up another hypo, this one presumably empty, and rolled on his stool to get a better angle.

Running steps approached them and Tech paused.

Wrecker slid the door open, eyes wide.

“Who was that?!”

“Who was what?”, Tech questioned with a raised eyebrow.

“That sneeze, just now! Was it you?!”, he exclaimed, excited smile growing as he stared at Dani.

“Uh… yes?”

“AHAHAHA!!!! You have strong inner muscles!!!! You’ll get buffed in no time!”, he patted her shoulder so hard that she almost toppled over the medbunk. “Are you coming to train?”, he pointed with a thumb over his shoulder.

“Later, Wrecker. We have to get some medical stuff done here first”, Tech answered.

“Oh… Okay! See ya later!”, he waved.

“See ya!”, Dani waved back, and turned to Tech, who was now regarding her with a serious demeanour.

“Something wrong.”

“I forgot to check if you are sick.”

“That’s what we’re doing now, aren’t we?”

“I forgot to check if you _were_ sick when you came aboard”, he punctuated.

“Oh”, she blurted out, realization dawning on her. “OH”, her expression morphed into one of horror.

Of course. Just like their common cold could kill her, her common cold could kill them too.

“Indeed”, the slicer nodded slowly, seeming horrified with himself.

“I, uh, I didn’t have any symptoms before boarding! Hadn’t been sick in weeks prior to that and I haven’t felt ill since you picked me up, so I should be clean!”, she told him hastily.

Tech let out a long, relieved sigh.

“Okay, that’s something. We still should check, though: some viruses don’t manifest themselves immediately, they blend in with your DNA and—”

“Yes, lysogenic viruses. I know”, Dani cut him, offering her arm again.

He blinked in surprise, but recovered quickly, placing the hypo against the crook of her elbow.

“I didn’t know you had that knowledge”, he commented, extracting the blood sample.

“I like biology. It was my favourite subject at school: I know about genetics, evolution, microorganisms and ecology; but I’m pretty sure all of my knowledge is superficial.”

“Hm, I see. And how come you like that field?”

“I dunno”, she shrugged as Tech placed a band aid over the puncture wound. “I think I just enjoy having knowledge about my environment. Especially animal behaviour and plant and algae properties and how different organisms and species interact and that’s ecology, so…”

“Dissections?”, he prompted out of the blue, not looking at her as he placed the blood sample in the analysis machine.

“Not my jam, unless I found the specimen already dead and I had the tools at hand.”

“I see”, he hummed, and seemed pleased by her answer.

“And you? You seem good with computers, but is it the field that most interests you?”

“Ah. Well; I do enjoy electronics! I’d say I know a bit of everything else. I’m just… very curious. When I was younger I read everything that I could get my hands on, so…”

“Oh! Do you have stuff on zoology or botany? I would LOVE to learn about alien flora and fauna!”

“Yes, sure, I can find you something. It’ll help your reading level too”, Tech hummed. “Ah: here’s your phone! Now you can contact us, and you should be able to access the holonet, so I’ll be able to send the files there”, he added, handing it to her

“Thanks!”, Dani chirped, glad to recover it.

“Don’t mention it. Interesting interface, by the way. I’ll be implementing it in our datapads”, he tapped away at the terminal, a small content smile on his face.

“Glad it’ll be helpful”, she smiled back.

“We’re done here for now. You can go train with Wrecker and I’ll get back to you when the results come up.”

“Cool. Thanks, Tech!”, she waved goodbye, quick footsteps fading towards the gym.

“Bye”, he said distractedly, glancing briefly to her retreating form before turning back to the screen.

First things first: check if she was really human.

“Tech, vod”, Hunter yawned, having opened the door to the medbay to find his brother enraptured with the main terminal. “You haven’t come to try to sleep yet. Are you okay? Is she the carrier of some nasty bug and we have a day to live?”

“No. She’s healthy, apart from some minor cold-sore viruses”, he replied without looking away. “And some deeply ingrained ancestral viruses that don’t have the means to separate themselves from her DNA anymore, so we don’t have to worry about those.”

“Alright. That’s good. Then: what are you doing?”, he almost whined, leaning on the door frame.

He didn’t reply for a moment, fingers hovering over the keys in his pause.

“…Running a paternity test.”

Hunter’s thoughts halted abruptly, his mind going unnaturally blank. He might as well have had a concussion grenade explode in front of his face.

But—Nah, it surely was to check her ancestry or something. To check if her breed of human was similar to theirs. Yeah, sure that was it.

“Why?”, Hunter managed to articulate.

“Reasons”, Tech replied slowly.

And yeah, that was as good as a confirmation of his thoughts to the Sergeant.

“Alright. But do get some shut-eye, alright?”

Tech flashed him a thumbs-up.

And Hunter walked back to his bunk, wondering if that conversation had been real at all.

“Meeting”, a voice called right by his ear, and Wrecker jerked awake, hitting his head against Crosshair’s bunk and waking him in return.

“Wah—”

“I’m calling a meeting”, Tech clarified, and glanced over Hunter, who was already waking up at the ruckus.

He rolled to check the chrono, dismayed to see it was nearly the time when they all woke up.

“Hn… It couldn’t wait thirty minutes…?”

“I re-checked twenty times to be sure before deciding to bring it up now”, Tech justified, sitting at the ship’s main console and pulling up one of the screens.

Rolling joints and stretching muscles, they gathered around their brother.

“It’s a disease, isn’t it? We’re gonna die. That’s what we get for trying to be kind”, Crosshair grumbled.

Wrecker smacked his arm, more playfully than angry, so he smacked him back. Tech would have rolled his eyes if his mind hadn’t been already reeling.

“It’s not that. She’s healthy. But I compared her DNA to ours to check for similarities.”

“So? Is she human, or does she only look like one?”, Crosshair prompted, arms crossed.

He swore, if she was some sort of shapeshifter who tried to trick them—

“Congratulations are in order”, Tech deadpanned instead of answering him, turning the monitor so they could see it better. “We’re parents.”

Words had never given them whiplash before. Cruel words that felt like knifes? Sure. But whiplash? That was new.

“WHAT?!”, Cross was the first to react. “No, that can’t be!”

“There’s literally common genetic material. See this chromosome here? Exactly like ours. This one? Has a portion of ours, which means there has been genetic recombination with another set of chromosomes. That would be the mother’s”, Tech pointed at different sections of the karyotype and other diagrams.

“It’s a trick! There’s no way—”

“It… It would explain her father having Kaminoan tech, but not being Kaminoan”, Hunter thought out loud, hand going up to cup his chin.

“So what, you really think her father is a runaway clone?”, Crosshair snarled, about to have an aneurism.

“It must have been one of the first successful clones for her to be this age”, Tech hummed.

“An Alpha?”, Wrecker finally snapped out of it.

“No, no: there were more clones before the Alphas, they were more like… for the trial and error thing. Those who survived got absorbed into training regimes when the standard clones were old enough, I think…”

“That doesn’t make any sense! An early clone just wouldn’t make it out of Kamino! We’re being set up, _somehow_!”, Crosshair’s eyes darted wildly around the room before landing on their Sergeant. “Hunter! Hunter, we _have_ to get rid of her!”, he went as far as to grip at the neck of his shirt, eyes wide with fear.

He was ready to argue, to come up with a reply to whatever came out of Hunter’s mouth, either if it was doubt or even at attempt at defending the girl, but instead his brother’s eyes flickered past his shoulder and he let out a long breath, carefully detangling Crosshair’s fingers from his clothes.

“Dani, I know you’re here. Let’s talk about this.”

The other three whipped around, scanning the whole cockpit for the girl, but saw nothing at first. Then, in the far corner closest to the door, there was a flicker of colour, and suddenly Ducky was there, pressed against the wall, eyes wide and darting as her chest visibly went up and down with her anxious breathing.

“Look who was eavesdropping…”, Cross tsked and tensed, his posture so obviously hostile that Dani tensed further, and that in return put the sniper even more on edge.

“You guys were literally yelling”, she managed to croak through the tightness of her throat.

“Who are you?! Who sends you?!”, he yelled accusingly, and she flinched back with a gasp, disappearing from view again. “Shit!”, Crosshair spat, and dived for one of Tech’s DCs, the closest weapons to them.

“Cross, no!”, Hunter roared, gripping at his forearm.

“You gave her back her knife!”, he growled at him.

“She hasn’t moved! Do NOT escalate this!”, the Sergeant ordered, his own heart beating wildly. “Dani. Dani, we’re not going to hurt you, please don’t cloak yourself. You’re confused, we’re confused; so let’s sit down and talk, alright?”

For an eternal moment, there was no reply, no movement. They only knew she was still there because the door hadn’t opened and Hunter was still staring at the same spot, but the silence was starting to get uncomfortable. Meanwhile, he had managed to get Crosshair to lower the gun.

He planned on staying like this as long as it took. He just hoped his brothers would be patient enough.

“I don’t know what’s going on”, the nothingness hiccupped. “I don’t know what I have done, I don’t know why you’re angry…!”, her voice broke.

“The… analysis results came up”, Tech started slowly. “We’re related.”

Dani was shocked back into the visible spectrum, now sitting against the far wall with her knees drawn up to her chest.

“…What?”

“We need you to tell us about your father. What do you know about him? Do you have a holo of him, can you describe him?”, Hunter prompted.

“I. Uh”, she blinked in shock. “I have a printed picture of him”, she mumbled, patting her ever-present cargo pants.

Crosshair tensed again, but this time it was Wrecker’s big hand who restrained him. He looked over his shoulder, disbelieving that his best friend was going to fight him too in this, and was met with eyes that only asked for a chance. He shrunk minutely, turning to face the girl with narrowed eyes and ready to retrieve the weapon Hunter had made him put down.

But what slipped out of Dani’s pocket was clearly a sheet of flimsy, or something. She looked at it for a moment, features scrunching up as if in turmoil for a second before tuning it so the image would face them.

Ironically, Crosshair was the one who could see it better from that distance; and his brothers knew, turning to him for confirmation.

He didn’t need to say much: his lack of words was answer enough to their silent question.

“How old are you?”, Wrecker asked in wonder.

“…Almost sixteen”, she replied as if in a daze.

“Heh”, he chuckled, an awestruck smile growing on his face, hand swiping his bald head. “You’re so old!”

That was a weird thing to say, but there were more pressing matters

“Are you… are you my uncles?”, she asked shyly.

“Did you know about us?”, the Sergeant asked.

“My dad said he had brothers”, she started to explain, body slumping against the wall. “Before he left. Said he thought they might be in trouble and wanted to try to help them.”

“…So a reg somehow managed to leave Kamino, have a normal life and the idiot _came back_?”

Dani snarled at him.

“Cross”, Wrecker warned.

“He’s not an idiot! And I don’t know what ‘reg’ means, but he’s not that either!”

“Actually… I’m afraid he is”, Tech nervously readjusted his goggles.

“Why?”, she huffed, clearly getting angry.

“Did your father mention you how many brothers does he have?”, the slicer went on. “What he is?”

“I—No. He’s a person, what does everything else matte—!”

“He’s a clone”, Crosshair drawled. “Like us.”

Dani jerked back, the words not entirely registering.

“What…?”

“I think it’s about time we had that conversation about the war”, Hunter sighed.

Hours later, Ducky was still tucked against the far corner of the cockpit, hugging her knees and eyes darting numbly in the middle distance.

“I don’t… I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean”, she mumbled quietly.

Oh, she knew what it meant. She knew what a clone was. And her hosts, _Clone Force 99_ , they had said; had more than enough proof that Sol Camino, her father, was in fact a clone of the Grand Army of the Republic.

“It means you’re _kriffed_ ”, Crosshair blurted out, and was instantly elbowed for it. “Auch”, he complained without bite. Even Dani was too numb to react to his bluntness. “What makes you think he’s on Coruscant?”

“…I don’t know. I just… I heard the name. Figured it would be a good place to start looking. You said it’s the capital.”

She felt so detached. Her father was a clone. What did that mean? What did that change?

“I think her father is dead”, at least he had the tact to mumble that quietly to his teammates. “And if he isn’t: nobody is going to help her find him. Nobody will care.”

It was a hard truth, but it still was the truth; and they knew it.

“If the Kaminoans find out about her, she’s as good as dead”, Tech added sorrowfully.

They turned to glance at her shaking form.

“…But she’s Force-sensitive. If the Jedi take her in they will help her, right?”, Wrecker tried.

“Aren’t Jedi raised in the Temple? Do they accept older kids?”, Hunter asked, honestly clueless.

“I… don’t know. I think so. As long as she can prove that she is Force-sensitive…”, Tech shrugged, already turning to the terminal to start his research.

“So… we’re still taking her to Coruscant…?”, Wrecker asked.

The three of them looked at Hunter.

“Yes”, he nodded after a beat, resolution flooding his features for a moment before he forced them to soften, slowly approaching Dani and reaching to grasp her hand. “Hey, kiddo”, he spoke, managing to get her attention and not flinching at the turmoil in her eyes. “It’ll be alright. We’ll help you, okay? But this galaxy is a dangerous place to you, so we’ll be training you so you can protect yourself, yeah?”

Ducky nodded numbly.

“Let’s all get something to eat”, he prompted, his own stomach remembering him that they hadn’t had breakfast yet.

“’M not hungry”, she mumbled, staring at the durasteel floor again.

“You’ll regret not eating when your training begins in earnest”, he tried to joke, but she didn’t react to it. He looked at his brothers for help, but they all shrugged cluelessly. Hunter sighed. “Will you try to eat later, at least?”, he tried.

“Yeah”, Dani murmured in reply, still not quite meeting his eyes.

It didn’t feel right to leave it there, but at the moment he didn’t feel like there was much more he could say.

“Tell us if you need anything, alright?”, he squished her shoulder lightly.

When she only gave another nod in response, he led his brothers to the galley.

Wrecker looked so crestfallen that the ship felt dead without his broadcasting energy.

“Hey. What’s gotten into you?”, Crosshair lightly kicked his leg under the table.

The giant was holding his head between his hands, elbow on the table and lips tipped downwards in a pitiful expression.

“It’s just… she knows we’re clones now”, he lamented.

 _Oh_.

“It was nice while it lasted, I guess”, Tech shrugged. “Having her treat us like—“

“Like we’re not defects?”, Crosshair completed.

“I was going to say ‘like decent people’, but I guess that works too.”

“Why? Did she say something to you?”, Hunter asked Wrecker.

“Not like she needs to”, Crosshair scoffed. “We told her her father’s a clone and she went almost catatonic.”

“Well. We also told her that she has an army of uncles who had been fighting and dying for years now in a galactic war that just gets worse and worse”, Tech added.

“Oh, come on; we left all the gruesome details out!”, the sniper rolled his eyes.

“And we’re not telling her about those. Copy?”, Hunter looked at them one by one.

“Copy.”

“Agreed.”

“I told you not to get attached to her.”

Hunter raised an eyebrow at him. Crosshair just jerked his head towards Wrecker, worry and displeasure mixing in his features: _Look at what she did!_

“Come on, Wreck”, the Sergeant gave an encouraging smile. “It’s just the shock. I’m sure once she gathers herself she’ll be back to asking questions and running around with you.”

“You think?”, he perked up a bit, sincerely looking forward to it.

“Sure, vod.”

Or at least, he hoped.

* * *

[Find out how Sol ended up on Earth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19264822/chapters/47066206)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With that out of the way, a new level of bonding can begin!!!!


	8. The Training Of A Tube Child

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunter did promise that he would train Dani but damn if he isn't going to involve his brothers in it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to a comment by Menma I realized I didn't explain that in the Duckyverse Series, the Clone Wars drag on for way longer than in canon; but when met with a canon character picture them with their canon age.  
> Just roll with it  
> Also, I have added a link at the end of the first chapter so you can go read what Dani went through the day prior to be picked up
> 
> Thanks for reading and enjoy!!!

Dani skipped breakfast and hid away the rest of the morning, and still snuck her lunch away after the others had eaten, but by afternoon her mind had cycled through her thoughts a few times and she felt steadier and bored, so she went to the gym.

Wrecker was there, barely grunting as he lifted a weight that she couldn’t hope to lift half a centimetre off the ground in her current shape. Still: she would take that as a motivator.

He caught her staring.

“Uh… hi?”

“Hi!”, she startled out of it. “Sorry, it’s just… wow”, she let her awed smile flourish.

It only felt natural that he smiled in return.

“I came to do the sets you told me to do, if you’re not busy?”

“’Course!”, he set his weights down.

So far so good?

He eyed her as she walked where she had left her weights the last time (20kg were the lightest they had, so she couldn’t do long sets starting from zero), wearing a white tank top, fit pants that ended just above the knees and her trusty deep blue trainers. There wasn’t anything unusual in the way she moved: no stiffness, no visibly nervousness; and her eyes didn’t flicker around the room more than was usual for her.

“Do you think I can start with longer sets now?”, she asked him, flexing an arm to prod at the hardening muscle underneath the skin.

“I don’t think you have an option if the Sarge was serious about training you. And I think he is”, he chuckled.

Dani startled, blinking up at him.

“It is… very hard?”, she grimaced.

His first instinct was to say it would be. His training had been, after all.

He remembered the endless tests. The burning in his muscles as he was pushed to his limit and further, time and time again. Sweat dripping to the floor as he panted, desperate to cool down under the crushing weight; limbs trembling, shaking, bruises on his knees when they finally gave up—

“Wreck?”, her voice chirped with worry, cutting through the memories.

His eyes focused on the present again, those big, brown eyes that he was used to seeing in his brothers staring up at him with hesitant concern. Before she could take in enough air to speak her next sentence, he plopped a hand on her head and ruffled her curls.

Her training would be demanding, specially if they only had until reaching a decent spaceport to teach her. But it wouldn’t break her. Hunter probably didn’t mean it to either, but he would make sure it wouldn’t.

“We’ll make it work.”

She sat down with them for dinner.

“Man, I think you would like _kare kare_. But I need some sort of nut to make the sauce or it won’t be worth a thing. I mean, the _kaldereta_ I made wasn’t bad after adding salt, hm?”, she chattered, chasing her protein paste before spearing it.

The Bad Batchers exchanged glances.

“You look… better than this morning”, Tech ventured.

“Yeah, time to process will do that”, she nodded to herself.

“…So?”, Crosshair prompted.

“’So’, what?”, she shrugged with disinterest.

“Your dad’s a clone. We’re clones”, he stated, sounding bothered. “What’s your take on that?”

The question seemed dragged, like he didn’t really want to ask it or he already dreaded the answer.

“I mean. It’s new to me because cloning of people is forbidden on Terra or people just isn’t interested to do that. What comes as a shock is the notion that there’s millions of men out there with my _tatay_ ’s EXACT face? Like. Millions of twins. Wow. I have questions, though?”

She tilted her head. The clones exchanged glances again. If she asked about Kamino…

“You guys look very different from each other. Were you raised apart from the others?”

“…Yes”, Hunter answered cautiously.

“Ah, that explains it. Same genotype can present—”

“—Different phenotype!”, Tech completed with an excited smile. “YES! You get it!”

“Yeah! Like twins raised in different environments. I think it’s very cool how genotype is about potential, not carved-in-stone attributes.”

“Are you really sixteen years old?”, the slicer asked.

“Yeah. Why? Do I look like I have another age?”

“No, no, it’s just… we’re younger, but we were genetically engineered to age faster. I’m just surprised that you didn’t inherit that, that’s all.”

“Really?”, she leaned back in surprise, turning to blink at Wrecker, who in return turned to blink at her.

“I’m 10, but I’m tall for my age”, he deadpanned.

Dani’s face contorted into a mix of an incredulous smile with hysterical confusion, a sort of distressed wheeze rocking her body as she buried her head in her hands, caught between laughing and screaming at the surrealistic situation.

“Are you for real?!”, she managed to articulate, feeling as if her concept of maturity and human development tumbled down a hill.

“You broke her”, Crosshair grinned instead.

“Oh man. Oh man; am I the oldest here?!”, she screeched, raising her head from her hands.

“Technically. But you’re also the only one who isn’t an adult”, Hunter pointed out.

Her reply to that was a tilt of her head and a thoughtful nod.

“I’m just glad you get to take your time growing”, Wrecker patted her back.

_I’m just glad you’ll get to live longer_ , was what he really meant.

“Oh”, she voiced suddenly, straightening on her seat.

“Oh?”, Tech prompted.

“I wond—I guess that’s why my parents used assisted reproduction”, she blinked in realisation. “My mother—“, she had to make a small pause to swallow and make sure her voice didn’t shake. “—she told me that my dad had bad genes, and that’s why I’m a tube child. I was conceived _in vitro_ with three other siblings, but later implanted in my mother’s uterus for development”, she explained, eyes fixed in an undetermined point.

“Oh! So you’re half like us!”

“What happened to your siblings?”, Crosshair asked gravely.

Dani turned to him.

“I was the only viable embryo”, she shrugged. “Two of them would have died as a fetus and caused my mother traumatic miscarriages, and the other would have died before reaching 10; for what she told me.”

So she was the lucky one.

They had _all_ lost their batchmates.

“Anyways”, she chirped, somehow shattering the sombre atmosphere that had threatened to envelop them. “The fact that my dad is a clone changes nothing. He’s still my dad and I’m going to find him”, she went back to harassing her food.

“Do you have his number?”, Tech asked.

The face she pulled meant that she didn’t even know what number he was talking about.

“We are assigned numbers when we’re decanted.”

“You mean born?”

“Uhm, well: we’re not exactly born because we come out of a growing jar, not a womb, so—”

“Since when ‘born’ means ‘to come out of a womb’? ‘Born’ means that the internal development is over. The fetus stage is over. ‘Decanted’”, she scoffed, rolling her eyes. “That sounds like something that somebody would say to further dehumanize you.”

The others jerked in surprise, blinking at her.

“What? I have been taught critical thinking”, she narrowed her eyes at them, taking a sip of water.

“Anyways”, Tech shook his head. “Your father’s number. Do you have it?”

“…No”, she deflated.

“That… complicates things. A lot”, Hunter winced.

“His name won’t do?”, she asked with hesitant hope.

“Oh, sweet summer child”, Crosshair closed his eyes with a sigh.

“I’m sorry, but it won’t”, Hunter replied sympathetically, placing a hand over Crosshair’s mouth to keep him quiet for a while. “Do you have a plan for that?”

“I… I was hoping that asking around, somebody eventually would know him and pass him the message.”

_If he’s even alive_ , they all thought, and were especially glad that the sniper was muted right now, because he would 100% said that out loud.

“We were talking before”, Hunter decided to tell her. “We think that if you are in fact Force-sensitive and manage to get in the Jedi Order, they might be able to help you out. They have a lot of reputation and power, for what I know.”

“Hm”, she took a moment to reflect. “What are they about? What do they do? I’m not entering a religious order without researching them first”, Ducky pouted.

“They are Generals.”

“They are peacekeepers.”

“They know how to use the Force and all that.”

Crosshair wrestled Hunter’s hand away.

“They’re pricks.”

Dani laughed.

“What? It’s true. We’re made for them but a five years old would lead us better”, he grumbled.

“A regular five years old or an enhanced five years old?”, she smirked.

“Both”, Cross replied without missing a beat, stealing another short laugh from her.

He didn’t dislike that sound.

“Hm… I think most reliable information about the Jedi Order is at their hands and not really available to the public, but I gather what I can and send it to your phone.”

“Oh! Yes, thank you”, she said in advance.

“Alright, then. You better go to bed, kid. Your training begins tomorrow morning”, Hunter downed what was left of his meal.

“Smooth way of imposing me a bedtime. Real smooth”, she rolled her eyes, slapping the table as she stood up, already heading for her room/closet/bunk room.

The smile that they could not see widened when she heard their snorts and quiet chuckles and snickers.

The next morning Ducky plopped herself down the stairs of the ship and onto the crunchy weeds of yet _another alien planet_ , where Tech was already waiting for her. The others were also there, but lounging around the space, while Tech was obviously in the middle of it, so she guessed he was taking the lead.

They glanced at her when they heard her come out, a certain eagerness in the way they perked up. It felt like someone’s initiation, and even if what they were about to do was very basic, initiations were always an occasion for celebration.

She was wearing the same pocketless, tight pants she used for weightlifting with Wrecker and her almost omnipresent trainers. What called their attention today, was that she was wearing a loose translucent orange shirt.

It was shockingly unerotic for the Bad Batch.

They had never had any experience with cisgender women, but for what they had understood from conversations among trainers and the few holos they had been able to put their hands on, women’s bodies were supposed to make them feel _something_. They were supposed to be irresistible, to be so beautiful that they couldn’t move their eyes from certain spots.

But they looked at Dani and… nothing.

Her hips were a bit wider, but they could only hum approvingly because that meant better stability.

They could see her sport bras pressing her breasts against her chest, but that didn’t strike them as something worthy of staring at either. It just looked like she had really strong pectorals.

Guess that if holos weren’t a good source for warfare knowledge, they weren’t for interactions among opposite genders either.

With that split-second assessment, they moved on.

“Alright, then”, Tech started, gesturing for her hand. She offered it slowly, unsure of what he wanted her to do. He grabbed her wrist and twisted it gently so her palm faced the sky above them, and then plopped a glock in it. “Today I’m teaching you proper handling of a pistol.”

“Uhm… ‘kay.”

“How would you hold it?”, he prompted.

Ducky closed her fingers around it and pointed it away from everybody.

“Mindful of safety”, Tech nodded, filing the information to himself. “But your grip is unsteady. Don’t be afraid of holding it with two hands until you are used to the weapon.”

She brought her other hand to the gun to reinforce her hold.

“Good. Speaking of safety: the blaster’s. You have it over here”, he stepped forward to point it at her. “Right now it’s on, obviously. We won’t be touching it for now, but be always mindful of checking it every now and then.”

He turned it on and off to demonstrate, but moved it back to ‘on’ before stepping back.

“Now, shooting posture. You want to be as steady as you can be, so adjust yourself a bit and let’s see how you do.”

He waited while Dani parted her legs wider apart and bent her knees a bit, just like Crosshair had told her to do before, and rose the DC, aiming it at the trees nearby.

“Alright. I’m going to shove you around a bit to check if it’s well enough, alright? Correct your pose as needed”, he warned her.

His first shove was surprisingly strong, so much that she staggered a few steps away, but at least managed not to fall on her face. After a shocked yelp and regaining her balance, she stroke a pose again, this time shifting a leg.

Tech’s next push made her other feet slide through the grass, so she put more strength on her legs.

The shoving kept on for a while, until Dani was tense physically and mentally.

“Not bad”, he encouraged gently. “Take a break. We’re going to cycle you through all the exercises we have thought of first to see what will need more work”, he passed her a canteen and she returned the pistol carefully, checking the safety even when she had it aimed to the ground.

With that done, she didn’t waste any time plopping on a rock and just breathing.

Next, Crosshair walked up to her.

“I’m teaching you close combat”, he announced, discarding his toothpick with a flicker of his fingers.

Dani watched it arch in the air and get lost among the grass.

“You?”, she blurted before she could help herself.

Having to learn to fistfight with the person who had been the most openly hostile of them was… unnerving.

“Unless you want to have a go with Wrecker?”, he pointed to his brother over his shoulder with a thumb.

“YEAH!”

“Hell no!”, she sprung to her feet.

“Oh…”

“Maybe when I know how to throw a punch, Wreck”, she smiled nervously, trying to make him feel better.

Chances were that she would never be able to bring him down in a fight.

And it would be alright. The others were there. They wouldn’t let Crosshair be too harsh.

Right?

“You’ve _really_ never been in a fight?”, he asked incredulously.

“It’s frowned upon to start fights at school”, she shrugged.

“Not even play-fighting?”

“I don’t have siblings and never reached the level of trust with my neighbours to fight them.”

“Okay”, he facepalmed, and took what she guessed was a calming breath. “Starting from zero. First: your stance— it’s a good thing that you at least have a bit of practice with Tech’s tactic, so strike that pose and throw a punch to my hand”, he instructed, his gloved palm in display to her. He must have noted her unease, because he rolled his eyes. “Don’t hold back. I’m wearing protection for this.”

“Okay”, she gulped, more confident now, and threw her first punch.

“You just hit me with your arm’s momentum. Put your body’s weight into it.”

“How?”, she tilted her head in confusion.

“You don’t fight with your limbs, brat. You fight with your _whole_ body. Again.”

She raised an eyebrow at the mild taunt, but kept a cold head and took notice of how her body felt when she punched. This time there was more weight in her hit, but her feet skidded for purchase.

“Mind your stability. Again. More weight. Your left hook is weaker. Wreck, did you get that? Make her work out her left side. Again. Okay, I see you’re relying on explosive strength here; not bad, but it’s _really easy_ to break your arm. Once more. That’s enough. Now I want you to block my hits.”

Dani grimaced.

“Don’t look at me like a kicked tooka, I’m _already_ going easy on you! Arms up. You’ll want to block the hits with your forearms, but remember to protect your dominant side so you’ll be able to strike back. Ready?”

She let out a steadying breath and nodded.

Crosshair’s punches made her stumble and skid more than Tech’s shoves, but even when he got past her defence (which was more often than not), his hits never so much as grazed her skin.

“I’m done”, he said, leaving her panting and with sore arms to go sit at the same spot he had occupied before.

“Take a brake”, Hunter called out, and she walked to where he was sitting with Wrecker to get a hold of her breathing.

Her hands shook slightly, so he pushed a ration bar and water into her reach.

“Sorry to say, but I think we’ll have to half-ass your Force training, since we are… not really qualified to teach that”, he went on.

“I’ve made some research”, Tech materialized out of nowhere, datapad in hand. “And out together list with the most common Force abilities. Those being: levitation of objects, augmented speed and/or strength, mind control, foresight of potent dangers, visions, healing—”

“Mind control?!”, she exclaimed when she was able to pull in enough breath to do so.

“More like influence of one’s thoughts…”, he punctuated, but couldn’t find it in himself to go on at Dani’s grimace.

“That’s _disgusting_ …!”, she spat.

“Yes, well. I haven’t found anything about Jedis who can turn invisible, so unless that’s a very rare power, you’re going to have to learn to do something of this list to ensure that you’re taken in”, he shrugged apologetically.

“I’m not even trying the mind control thing”, she scowled harder.

“Fair. Anyways, we think it’s also important that you master your invisibility. It’s a very practical skill, and even if we are teaching you to hold your ground in a fight, avoiding the confrontation altogether is always the best option.”

“And the most boring one!”, Wrecker chimed in with a roll of his eyes.

“This isn’t about fun, Wrecker”, Hunter slapped his arm lightly. “It’s about survival. So we’ll train that, too. For how long can you keep up your cloaking?”

“I… don’t know. I few minutes, I guess”, she scratched her nape, trying to recall how long had taken her to murder those raiders.

She wasn’t very successful. When she tried to remember what she had done it felt like she had been deep in a trance.

“How about we test that now so you can take a break of physical activity?”, Tech suggested.

Checking that her breathing was now almost back to normal, she nodded and cloaked herself.

She was fine for the first minute. Started to feel a weird tickling at the second. By the third, her arms were trembling. At the fourth, she was panting.

“Okay, that’s enough”, Hunter reached for her, managing to grab her arm even when he didn’t know exactly where she was, only that she was there; and handed her the canteen again. “You alright? Feeling dizzy?”

“Tired”, she replied between pants.

She was indeed also dizzy, but Ducky didn’t think she needed to point that out when her eyes weren’t focusing on anything at the moment.

“Alright. The goal would be to get you to be able to maintain your cloaking for longer and see how many people you can cloak and for how long, but let’s take baby steps with this, yeah? Wouldn’t want you to pass out of exhaustion.”

“Or cause internal damage that we wouldn’t know of”, Tech added. “What? I’ve heard it can happen.”

Hunter and Wrecker ceased their glaring. Dani spaced out, trying to convince herself that if she were about to break a rib or pop an intestine she would notice.

She hoped so.

“Up for the last part?”, the Sergeant asked, startling her out of her thoughts.

Checking once again that she was rested enough, she followed him to the centre of the clearing an eyebrow raised in curiousness, but instead of stopping there he guided her to a fairly thick tree. “I’m teaching you knife-wielding”, he stated, and unsheathed two of them, offering one’s handle to her.

She took it with care and reverence, eyes widening as she took the weapon in.

Hunter saw her awestruck expression and grinned to himself.

“Alright, then”, he cleared his throat, schooling his expression as she perked up. “I’ll show you some moves against the trunk, and once I’m done you repeat them, got it?”

“Got it!”

“Pay attention—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hunter: listen, our childhoods sucked, right?  
> Cross, Wrecker and Tech: *nods of agreement*  
> Hunter: but Dani doesn't suck, right?  
> Cross, Wrecker and Tech: *nods of agreement*  
> Hunter: so we won't be passing her our trauma, yeah?  
> Cross, Wrecker and Tech: *nods of agreement*


	9. Markets And Night Clubs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Introducing Dani to alien society

“So?”, Hunter prompted his brothers when Dani had had her bruises patched up, inhaled her food and gone to sleep.

“Hard to say with just one cycle”, Crosshair shrugged. “But I don’t think she can take a beating. Her body is just not ready for that kind of stress. One well-placed hit, and she’ll be down and dead.”

“The learning curve tends to be fast at the beginning”, Tech added. “We’ll need to see how much it slows down once we start teaching her particular things.”

“Does it really matter? Even if she isn’t great at it, it’s better than not knowing how to defend herself at all”, Wrecker crossed his arms.

“True”, the sniper nodded, with Tech nodding along.

“I know; but if she isn’t taking things in it may be because we aren’t teaching it right, and then we’ll all loosing precious time”, Hunter argued.

“Also true. But you say it as if there were many ways to teach somebody how to punch and stab things.”

“And shoot”, Tech added.

“And shoot”, Crosshair nodded again.

“Well, we’re doing it differently than how we were taught, aren’t we?”, the Sergeant raised an eyebrow.

They averted their eyes, the kind of silence of when somebody doesn’t want to talk about a certain topic surrounding them.

“So we cycle her through the training two or three times and assess her again. Fair?”

“Fair.”

They felt bad, seeing the bruises littering Dani’s arms and legs.

Strangely enough, she didn’t complain: just winced and grimaced and maybe yelped or gasped when they hit an already sore spot. The first time Tech had applied bacta to the bruises she had stared as they changed colours and ultimately faded, mesmerized.

She ate more, now. They should have seen it coming.

“Are you… still hungry?”, Hunter had ventured when she had managed to beat Crosshair in emptying her plate.

“What? Oh! No, no! I’m good”, she waved her hands in denial as she settled to wait for them to be done with their meals.

And she sounded convincing: she didn’t even glance at their food and went on to her usual small-talk of when they ate together; mostly asking existential and/or dumb questions to pass the time.

Still, after a moment of consideration, Wrecker slid a part of his ration on her plate.

“Wreck, no! I said I’m fine!”, she complained.

“You’re growing”, he argued.

“Am not!”

“Then you should.”

She flickered out of existence along with her plate, and after a loud splotch she reappeared, the food back in his plate.

“Hey! That’s cheating!”, he complained with a smile, and proceeded to wrestle the extra food back in her plate.

Hunter’s comm beeped. He slipped out the galley quietly, leaving them to their food war to answer the call.

“Commander”, he greeted with a nod.

“Hunter! It’s good to see you. I tried to hail you a while back, but you were out of range and nobody knew of your whereabouts. You good?”

“We’re fine, sir. We, uh… took an unexpected detour into Wild Space due to faulty fuel; but here we are.”

Surely the fact that they had picked Dani up wasn’t worth mentioning. She was a passenger, after all; she wouldn’t be hanging around for long.

“I have some assignments more for you and your boys, if you don’t have your hands full already”, Cody let one of his smug smiles appear.

“Eh, we’ll make time for you”, the Sergeant sassed back. “Everything okay in your end? How’s the big fight going?”

The Marshall Commander’s expression turned weary.

“It keeps dragging”, he averted his eyes for a moment, the act more telling than his words. “And the Sith are… antsy. Did you feel it? A few weeks ago? Like eyes, watching you?”

“I… Yes. Yes, we felt it”, Hunter fidgeted. He had almost forgotten about it. “Thought it was a solar flare nearby or something. You felt it too?”

Cody nodded.

“And apparently, all Jedi and Sith felt it too…”

“Felt _what_ , exactly?”

“For what General Kenobi told me; a new Force-sensitive. A powerful one, if the frantic way they are searching for them is anything to go by. I just hope the Jedi can get to the baby before the Sith do, or…”

“Yikes”, Hunter said emphatically.

“Yikes?”, Cody questioned with interest.

“Oh, it’s—Some slang I picked up, I guess”, he scratched the back of his head

“Yikes”, the Commander tested again. “Sounds… heartfelt.”

“It sure is”, he nodded with a tight smirk, remembering the emotion Dani had said it with.

“Anyways. Seems like the hunt for the baby is around the Outer Rim, so try not to attract more attention than usual, alright? Stay safe out there.”

“Will do, Commander. You stay safe too. Hunter out.”

He went back to the galley, thoughts rumbling with a sense of unease that he mostly only felt with approaching storms, but all feeling was slapped away when a blob of protein paste hit him in the face.

“Ah geez sorry!”

“For this mission, we actually have to gather some intel first”, Tech started. “We have to taint the terrain, hit some clubs”, he went on, seeing how Ducky’s eyes widened and shone with interest. “And we can take you with us… if you promise not to get into trouble.”

“Yes!!!! Yeeeesssssssssss!!!! You’re taking me to a town?! I’ll finally see aliens?!”

“Technically, _we_ are aliens—”

“I’ll finally see other sapient species?!”, she corrected, her enthusiasm not going down even a notch.

“That it is, yes”, he huffed a smile.

Dani gasped in delight.

“Aw yeah! Aw YEAH! I’m so curious: I wanna hear how they speak, ask them about their homeplanets, ask them—”

“Actually”, Hunter cut her. “We have to lay low, and having you asking questions that are obvious to anyone else would be…”

He didn’t need to finish the sentence, because realization dawned reluctantly on her face.

“…So I don’t get to talk to anyone. Just watch”, she pouted.

“I mean: you can stay here and keep reading on sentient species”, Crosshair nagged her.

“I’m coming, but I’ll complain all the way”, she deadpanned. “Anyways. When do we go out? After dinner?”, she asked the Sergeant.

“First reconnaissance is now”, he replied, already unlatching his upper armour.

“Now?”, Ducky squinted in confusion. “We’re hitting a club at noon?”

Maybe this was normal? Maybe it was weird of Earthlings to party at night?

“We’re gonna walk around town first. Play it as if we’re tourists, so we’re not complete strangers when we do appear at the bar”, Wrecker explained.

Dani blinked at him for a long moment.

“…Mhm… I wouldn’t take you guys for tourists by your looks, but I’m now realizing that that’s pretty shallow of me and I know nothing of alien social rules and etiquette, so…”, she turned on her heels to go change clothes.

Crosshair scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“Just take your pocketknife and follow our lead.”

Turns out they weren’t very inconspicuous, but they were inconspicuous enough. She was more than happy with that; staying close to the group just like Hunter had asked her to and peeking around at all that was new to her.

Which meant _everything_.

The men had shed their armour and slipped pants over the black bodysuit they wore under it. Crosshair and Tech were also wearing some sort of dusty cloaks, with the hoods down. Wrecker had ditched all of his undersuit in favour of sporting a tank top.

For intimidation purposes, she supposed.

Ducky had opted to put on a white tank top and a red and black button-up shirt, leaving it flow freely around her with the sporadic gusts of wind and tight jeans with her favourite combat boots: black with red flowers embroidery.

Dani tugged at Tech’s sleeve again to get his attention, gesturing to a passer-by with her head with shining curiosity in her eyes.

“A Nikto”, he supplied.

“Nikto”, she tasted the word in her mouth quietly, head turning to watch them walk by.

Another tug.

“A Vulptereen.”

“Woah”, she couldn’t help but voice at the sight of their head and tusks.

The market was the most wonderful of places right now. Wherever she looked there were objects she had never seen, languages she had never heard, people she would kill for to be able to ask them how their bodies worked—

But she wouldn’t do it, despite the itch deep in her being; because even she was aware that would be a VERY weird thing to do.

“Not that I’m complaining, but how come nobody looks at us?”, she asked in a hushed tone to the group. They glanced at her with arched eyebrows and clueless looks. “I mean… Are humans that common? That _boring_?”, she stressed.

“Lucky to us; we are”, Crosshair answered.

So many things went unsaid with that. So many reasons why that was a good thing.

“Hm”, she pouted, but decided not to ask further. If there was something she needed to know, she had faith they would tell her.

She already knew about the rampaging slavery, anyways.

Another tug to Tech’s sleeve.

“A Mon Calamari.”

“They look like a squid”, she hummed, mouth watering. “…Would it be considered cannibalism if—”

“YES. Yes, it would!”, Wrecker’s tight tone made her shrink on herself, half ashamed half amused.

“No biting Mon Calamaris”, Hunter looked at her dead in the eye.

“I wasn’t gonna!”, she defended herself with a bothered pout, and put her attention on what seemed like a display of cheeses, keeping her hands loosely held behind her back to remind herself to not touch anything. “…Those are blue.”

“Out of curiosity”, Crosshair piped up suddenly, almost shoving a datapad on her face. “Would you eat this?”

Ducky leaned back, grimacing at the sight of some sort of languid, white alien species.

“What is it?”

“It’s a—“, Tech started.

“No, don’t tell her yet!”, the sniper stopped him.

“Uh… Not at first sight”, she answered slowly. “It looks a bit like an eel, but… sickly? How do their necks hold the skull’s weight?”, she squinted at the image.

“So that’s it? No innate instinct to eat them alive?”, he nagged, eyebrow raised in disappointment.

“I don’t have such a thing at all!”, she grumbled angrily. “I like my food dead and cooked. What’s this, then?”, she gestured at the screen.

“It’s a Kaminoan”, Tech finally supplied.

“Oh! So, like, from your homeplanet?”

“Yeah”, Wrecker shrugged, nudging her to move on to the next stand.

“So you’re… _not_ Kaminoans?”

“The term ‘Kaminoan’ refers to the only autochthonous sapient species of the planet. So no; we don’t consider ourselves Kaminoans.”

“Ah. You don’t consider yourself from Kamino, either?”

“Well. Yes: that’s where we grew up. But humans are dispersed enough all around the galaxy that nobody really wonders or wants to know their planet of origin.”

“…Humans really are the most boring species in this galaxy, hm?”

“Afraid so”, Hunter hummed, rummaging through some data chips.

Dani’s eyes caught a glimpse of a box tucked under the table used as stand, and crouched down to peek at it’s content. She was surprised to pull out some sort of book: Tech had told her paper—flimsi, he had called it—was barely used anymore, and was rare to find. So why was this supposed treasure put away in a box under the table of a modest stand in a dusty planet?

The pages were full of mandalas and various drawings of varying complexity to paint.

Well, that explained the painting sets in the box.

“Watcha got there?”, Wrecker nudged her.

“A colouring book”, she replied, lifting it up so he could browse it too. “I thought flimsi was very rare?”

“It is”, Tech confirmed, readjusting his goggles and eyes squinting as he studied it.

“This?”, the merchant noticed them. “This is just something I gave my kids ages ago. They never used it. I bet ya the markers are drier than Tatooine”, they scoffed.

“It’s a shame”, Dani muttered, eyes slipping back to the designs. “Those are beautiful.”

“How much for it?”, Tech asked without missing a beat.

“Mmmmmmmmmmm 40 credits.”

“20.”

“Tech, no!”, she yelped. “It’s pretty, but I don’t need it—”

“You do”, he cut her. “The only thing you do is train, study, listen to music and stare longingly at your pictures. Maturing brains need creative stimulus to develop healthily, and this will do.”

“30”, the seller went on.

“25, markers included.”

The seller raised an eyebrow angrily.

“You _did_ say those are probably dry”, he tilted his head forward cheekily.

Wrecker stepped closer, looming over them from behind Dani.

“…Deal”, they reluctantly agreed, kicking the box containing the markers from under the table so it collided against Ducky’s legs.

She leaned to put the colouring book back in and pick it up jerkily.

“Thank you”, she told Tech, suddenly feeling moved and mostly shy.

“Don’t mention it. We’ll probably have to find you better colours, though”, he hummed, already walking away.

Dani looked down at her new belonging for a moment, before Wrecker nudged her with a smile and she trotted up after them.

“—no leaving with strangers, no matter how friendly they are, and DON’T do drugs: specially when we’re here to find out where the spice comes from.”

Ducky felt somewhere in between mortified and disassociated into the neighbouring galaxy. Which probably was home, now that she thought about it.

“…I can’t believe you just gave me that talk”, she muttered to herself. A normal person wouldn’t have heard it, but Hunter did. Before he could comment, though, she went on: “What’s spice, anyways? Not your usual condiment, I guess”, she perked up with interest.

“It’s a potent sedative that can also be hallucinogen: it’s a key component to synthetizing anaesthetics, but in one of its rawer forms it is used as a hard recreational drug that moves millions of credits in the black market and mafias”, Tech supplied smoothly.

“Ohhh—So like opium”, she nodded in understanding.

It wasn’t space weed, then. Weed wasn’t considered a hard drug.

“Don’t. Accept. Drugs”, Hunter repeated, clearly wanting to make his point clear.

“Yes, yes, I know: don’t do drugs, don’t accept drinks from strangers and send texts periodically to check in with your companions. There’s rampant misogyny and rape culture on my planet too; I’ve known this stuff since I’m old enough to walk to school by myself”, she tsked, and head out the ship, waiting for them impatiently as they blinked at each other, perplexed.

The night club wasn’t much different from what she had seen on Terra. People and attires were more diverse, and the music was absolute worthless shit; but the general ambient was pretty much the same. Dani caught sight of the dancefloor and turned to head for it, but a hand caught her wrist and she was pulled back, to her lack of amusement.

“Check-in texts every 5 minutes”, Hunter said.

“20”, she offered back.

“10”, the Sergeant pressed.

“15, and I promise to tell you immediately if I feel threatened in any way at any moment”, she pulled her arm back, crossing them.

“It’s a good deal”, Tech chimed in.

With that, Ducky flashed a smile and slipped away.

“A lot can happen in 15 minutes”, Hunter muttered to his brother, displeased with his intervention.

“And nothing can happen in 5 minutes. You’ve heard her: she’s aware of the dangers. Have a little faith”, he patted the Sergeant’s shoulder and headed to order drinks.

“Hm. Crosshair”, he called the silver fox. He turned his head to him, already dreading his next words. “Keep an eye on her.”

Cross slumped in exasperation, but knew better than try to argue; and instead trailed after Tech. Hunter was aware the sniper had his methods to weasel out of the chores he didn’t want to do, but at least he’d tried. Wrecker also patted his shoulder, this time with a grin, and went to join the others.

They lined up at the bar and drank for a while, making small chatter first and exponentially growing in loudness and personal subjects, faking drunkenness to try and bait potential drug sellers. Hunter gazed anxiously at his comm, but Dani was dutifully sending texts along the lines of: _Still alive; not dead; OK; why’s the music so shitty?; I’ve drank a purple soda and I like it can we have it aboard????; Not threatened; I’m alive; Are YOU alive?; Was that Wrecker throwing a guy across the room just now?; still not dead_.

So at least that was covered.

Tech was the best at spotting sellers. He drummed his fingers on his glass when he spotted one approaching them, and the other three broke into a loud, inviting laugh.

The seller joined their laughter, smoothly setting themselves in the space between Hunter and Tech.

“My, my; I see you’re having fun, boys!”, the female Squib grinned amicably despite her fangs. “I’ve never noticed you before! You new in town?”

“Hey, lady!”, Wrecker rumbled, taking another sip of his beverage.

“Just passin’ through”, Crosshair’s fake slur was the BEST. “Havin’ some fun ‘fore headin’ for ‘nother BORING job…”

“Ah, that’s good! Having fun is important to stay healthy, yes? Nobody can stand the stress of work for too long”, she nodded. “If you would like to try something special for a wild night, just let me know, yeah? Ask the bartender for Guilla and I’ll join you.”

She flashed them a smile and melted back into the crowd.

“Hm”, Wrecker hummed, nose hidden inside his jar. “That was quick.”

“Patience”, Crosshair reminded, and took the chance to scan the local for Dani. “We have to make it look like we _tried_ to give this some thought.”

“Hey. What if she makes us consume it right here?”, Tech mused tensely.

“Don’t look at me. I’m not taking anything unless absolutely necessary and you know that”, Cross washed his hands on that.

“Same. I think even a gram of it could kill me or send me for a wild ride”, Hunter muttered into his drink, really not looking forward to it.

“I guess I—“, Wrecker started.

“NO”, his brothers cut it in unison.

“Wreck, mate; we couldn’t contain you even if we tried”, Crosshair dragged a hand down his face. His eyes were getting dry.

They turned to Tech, who’s eyes glanced between them.

“Nu-huh: those wreak havoc on the brain!”, he growled.

“It’s decided then. We get the teen to do it.”

“Cross, NO”, Wrecker sounded exasperated.

Hunter just shook his head slowly. “Let’s just get this over with and roll with whatever comes, like always. Bartender! Where’s Guilla?”, he called, swaying slightly on his stool.

The Gorith who had served them walked up to them lazily, with the dead-eyes of those we deal with drunk people on a daily basis and have to put up with it without committing murder.

“She is currently busy with another customer. She will be with you shortly.”

“Aw, but we want her now! Where’s she?”, Hunter cheered.

Wanting to be done with the conversation, they pointed over his shoulder, towards the dancefloor.

The Bad Batch turned to scan the crowd that had formed around the elevated space; where the usually packed dancing people had left room to watch a person dance. It was then, watching the red cloth flow around the dancer, that they registered the unknown language and the upbeat rhythm of the song currently playing:

_Let me go now_

_The feeling’s tearing me up_

_Here we go now_

_Now, if she does it like this_

_Will you do it like that?_

_Now, if she touches like this_

_Will you touch her right back?_

_Now, if she moves like this_

_Will you move it like that?_

_Come on_

_Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake it_

—

The crowd cheered as Dani hopped and spun and moved her arms, movements coordinated yet spontaneous and beautiful in their alternating abrupt and fluid gestures. For a moment they had no idea how she could keep her balance when she bounced with every beat of the music, legs shifting to accommodate a new pose. Some spectators tried to mimic her and she cheered them, repeating the movement slower and loosing the beat just to make a small bounce back to recover it, as easy as if she were diving in the music to flow along with it.

“She dances!”, Wrecker beamed, breaking the shock that had frozen them in place.

Hunter would have said something, but he was busy watching her move because her footwork was _exquisite_.

It dawned on him like an epiphany: dancers are fighters and fighters are dancers.

“We’ve been doing it wrong”, he muttered as the song ended and Dani trotted out of sight.

“What?”, Crosshair called.

“We… We pushed her around so she could take a beating, but she doesn’t _need_ to. No need to roll with the punch if it never connects”, he completed in excited awe, already planning their next training session.

Ducky trotted down the stairs that lead up the dancefloor, in dire need to cool down. She strode over to a bar, blushing and ducking her head as some people cheered at her, and ordered one of the canned sodas she had already drank: it was bubbly and cold and _sweet_ ; so from now on it was her favourite drink. She hoped it was cheap and easy enough to find that they could have it on the ship.

She had just taken the first, long gulp with a content sigh when somebody slid in the free stool next to her.

“Hello!”, what seemed like a talking fox greeted her with sharp teeth. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to startle you”, they seemed to notice, leaning backwards to give her more space.

“No; I’m sorry… I’m not very used to other species yet.”

“Oh? How come?”, they asked, and they looked cool and were friendly and not asking anything suspicious, as far as Dani could tell.

“I grew up on a planet with only humans”, she answered with a sheepish tilt of her head.

“Oh my! So you’re new here? Is this your first time off-world? You must be so excited!”, they squeaked. “Was that music from your planet? It was wizard! Oh, dear, I didn’t introduce myself! I’m Guilla!”, they offered a hand.

“I’m Dani”, she replied in kind, slowly going to shake their furry hand and deciding to ask because she wasn’t sure about it. “Can I know your pronouns?”

“Ah! She/her! Yours?”

“Same”, she smiled, glad that it seemed like she was following social protocol alright.

“Delightful! So you’re really new here?”, she leaned on the counter, eyes never leaving Ducky.

“Yep. First time drinking this, first time being here”, she gestured to the soda and then the local.

Guilla narrowed her eyes at her, lips pursing as if considering a thought very hard.

“You know what? Your moves were so sweet, and you seem like such a nice person, that I’m going to make you a present!”, she grinned, and dug in her bag.

Dani blinked curiously at her as she extracted some sort of transparent bag filled with reddish dust. Guilla held it out at eye’s height, grinning as she scanned Luna’s eyes for a sign of deception.

“What’s that?”, she finally asked, because that looked like sand to her.

“Just a little thing that we use around here to have a good time”, the dealer seemed to decide that she wasn’t a threat. “We call it spice. First round’s on me, but if you like it and want more, well… come to me and I’ll get you the best prices”, her grin sharpened.

“Oh! ...How do I… consume it?”, she asked, also completely clueless about it.

“That’s the best thing!”, Guilla threw her hands in the air in excitement, “You get to be creative about it!”, she winked, got up, and disappeared among the crowd.

Dani glanced at the small package, tucked it away in her pants, sent a quick text telling she wanted to leave, finished and paid for her drink, and walked up to Wrecker, who was standing right by the door; looking for her, if the way his head swivelled was any indication.

“Hey, Wreck”, she chirped, catching his attention when she was already standing by him.

“Force!”, he startled. “Don’t sneak on a guy like that!”, he splayed a hand over his chest.

“Sorry”, Dani grinned, amused.

“So. Done for the night?”, he gestured for the exit.

“Yeah. Gotta pee, but I saw the refreshers and… brrrr!”

“I feel you”, he nodded to no one in particular. “I’ll take you back to the ship and then I’m coming back, hm?”

“Sure.”

She waited until they were away from the building and she was sure that there were no presences from the club tailing them before turning to Wrecker.

“I want to make this clear for the record”, she started, and he looked down at her as she dug around a pocket, eyebrow arching, “That it doesn’t count as ‘do drugs’ if I didn’t consume any.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And remember, kids and not-so-kids: the Bad Batch wouldn't want you to do drugs!  
> With that said, don't shame or dehumanize drug addicts
> 
> Cody: so, yeah, there's this new Force-sensitive; a baby, they think  
> Hunter: damn poor kid. Well, it's time to go back to my TEEN Force-sensitive!  
> Ducky: *is baby*


	10. Dynamite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby's first mission!!! :D

“You really should stop running yourself into trees”, Tech couldn’t help but blurt out.

He had been watching her attempt to Force-boost her running and jumping for a good part of the morning.

It wasn’t very grateful at the moment, to put it mildly. Mostly because she had yet to learn to slow down instead of slamming herself into obstacles.

“I’m trying my best!”, she whined from where she lay sprawled on the ground, hand carefully going to prod the scratched cheek that had rubbed against the tree’s bark.

“Don’t touch it. Go put iodine in it and cover it up”, he scolded lightly, eyes flickering back to his datapad.

“No bacta?”

“It’s a very minor injury; so unless it _really_ hurts, I think we should save the bacta up for more dire situations.”

“That’s fair”, she shrugged, trotting back to the ship.

Crosshair watched her go in silence, going to lean over Tech’s shoulder where he was sitting on an empty crate.

“How’s it going?”

“We may not need any more incursions in town. Based on the oxidation of Dani’s spice sample, it was extracted from the ground less than two days ago. The closest planet is three days away through hyperspace, so we know the mine is here. Now; estimating that the distribution takes mostly a day, I’ve calculated the radius it could be from the club if it was delivered by foot, by speeder or by shi—”

“Do you know where the mine is or not?”, as interesting as it was, Cross had been using his patience to tolerate Dani’s presence, and it was starting to run thin.

“…It was delivered by speeder and it’s here”, he turned the datapad to show the marked topography. “You know? Dani would have let me finish.”

“Don’t get used to it. She’s a _passenger_ , remember?”

He _was_ cranky about everybody getting so comfortable around her, but he had mean that as part of their usual teasing. Yet, Tech looked away too quickly to be unbothered.

“Hey. I do like to know how you figure things out. It’s badass”, he nudged his brother, trying to get him to look at him.

Tech’s lips twitched into a smirk.

“It’s okay. I know you’re emotionally constipated”, he teased back.

“I’m not”, Crosshair scoffed.

“Since you like me explaining things so much, I could draw you a diagram”, he gave him the most shit-eating grin he had pulled off that month.

“Bah”, he pushed his head away lightly. “Just let’s go tell the others where the mine is already”, and he headed for the ship.

“Smooth way of changing the subject! Very smooth”, Tech trailed after him.

Cross rolled his eyes out of habit and made his way inside without another word, though he could still feel the amusement radiating off of Tech from behind him, if not laced with that faint thread of concern that came with knowing that someone has issues and is hiding them.

They all had some form of those, anyways. At first it had been common agreement to not talk about those, but as time went by and they grew to trust and love each other, they had just come out with it and never spoken about it ever again.

“Sarge”, the sniper called when he spotted Hunter doing inventory of his pack at the galley’s table. “We’ve got something”, he said, and stepped aside to let Tech in.

“The location, to be precise”, Tech handed him the datapad.

Hunter took it, his eyes flickering over the screen as he took in all the information displayed.

“Good job”, he smiled, offering it back to the slicer.

“Will we be doing some reckon?”, Crosshair quirked an eyebrow.

“No reckon!!! Only barging in!!!”, Wrecker hollered, appearing from behind them and scaring the shit out of Tech and Crosshair.

“Well. For what our intel says, the mine is run by Separatists and security and staff are formed by battle droids. And since our job is to clean it so Republic forces can take over…”, Hunter grinned up the big man.

“Take over?”, Dani ducked under Wrecker’s arm to get into the room. “You guys are fighting so the Republic has drugs instead of the Separatists?”, she asked to nobody in particular, opening a cabinet and stretching her arms high in an attempt to get the dried snacks stored on the top shelf.

“It’ll be used to make anaesthetics. Not drugs”, Tech frowned, not really understanding why she would say that.

“Sure, sure…”, she muttered noncommittally, standing on her tiptoes in her quest to reach the snacks.

Wrecker made to help her out, but Hunter stopped him with a gesture of his hand as he watched her. Wrecker made a confused pout before turning to watch too. Ducky, unaware of their exchange, glanced down and took notice of the low drawer right in front of her. She pulled it out with a foot and climbed up to it, managing to prop her knee on the counter and keep climbing up until she could grab the box comfortably. Leaning backwards to swing the cabinet close, she dropped down and picked a package without any more hassle.

“You guys want some?”, she offered it, already munching around the dried meat.

“No, we’re leaving for the mission now”, Hunter declined with a raised hand.

“Oh!”, she perked up, noticing that they were actually already geared. “Stay safe out there!”, she added, a flicker of shaky worry that might as well been as loud as an airstrike.

“Actually, you’re coming with us”, the Sergeant went on.

They all turned to him, eyes wide.

“What?”, Tech blurted out.

“We didn’t talk about this”, Crosshair hissed.

Taking advantage that Wrecker was torn between excitement and concern and Dani was shocked into a freeze response, he explained himself:

“Well: nowadays armed conflict _is_ abundant all around the galaxy. We’ve been preparing you to defend yourself, but none of that will matter if you panic because you have never been in a fight before.”

“…So we’re taking her to raid a spice mine”, Crosshair deadpanned.

“A _small_ spice mine, run by _droids_. It’s our simplest kind of mission. If we were ever going to have an assignment easy enough to bring a barely trained rookie with us and keep ‘em alive; it’s this”, he turned to look at Ducky, who seemed pretty distressed; yet her eyes were unfocused and her head tilted now and then, as if in deep thought. “Dani? Your thoughts?”

She jerked back into the present, lips pursed in discomfort and posture skittish.

“I mean… I get your idea, and I _guess_ it’ll be safer this way, but… I’m nervous about this.

“Me too”, Wrecker chimed in. “Look at her! One hit and there’ll be only two thirds of her left!”, he gestured at her, distraught.

“ _So_ much faith!”, she snipped at him.

“We’re obviously putting armour on her.”

All gazes went back to Hunter.

“What armour, exactly?”, Cross drawled.

Hunter turned to Tech.

“Do you still have your old set or did you already dismantle it?”

“Well. Partially. Something is better than nothing, I guess”, he muttered, and disappeared towards the storeroom, coming back with a pile of pieces. “Good news is: I didn’t completely obliterate Cross’ old set as I thought I did”, he started handing out pieces and Dani could only grab them as he gave them, not really knowing what to do with them.

“How do I…?”, she started to ask, clueless gaze aimed at Wrecker.

“Oh! It’s easy! You can either go from down up or start with your chest and go outwards—“, he patiently showed her, stripping his own armour to demonstrate.

Hunter took the pieces that kept coming and placed them on the table carefully as Tech ranted on about what the missing pieces had ended up being used for: a vambrace was now the patch-up work that fixed the leak in the refresher’s sink, a cuirass was now a shelf in the storage room…

“It won’t be a fit, _per se_ , but—”, he went on, but froze as he turned to Dani, eyes travelling up her now suited form. “Huh. You’ve grown.”

“I’m surprised too!”, she smiled, looking down at herself with excitement. “I mean, it’s still a bit loose”, she demonstrated gripping the chest plate and rattling it around a bit. “But it’s not clown size.”

Wrecker put a hand flat on the top of her head and moved it against him at the same height, landing just below his collarbone.

“You _have_ grown!”, he marvelled.

“One growth spurt less to go”, she shrugged happily.

“Hm… It makes sense. You did have a small cold, and the hormones that are released when sick—”

“—are the same that prompt growth!”, Ducky finger-gunned at him with a toothy grin.

Tech blinked at her.

“I thought having someone around that also knows random things would make me feel accomplished, but now I mostly feel threatened”, he deadpanned.

“Friendly reminder that you had to teach me how to read”, she replied without missing a beat and with a smug smile.

“…Self-confidence restored. Let’s go”, he said, turning to go fetch his backpack.

“Dani”, Hunter called her as the others also left. “I want you to grab a pack and carry your own things: water, food, pocketknife; whatever you think you may need. We’ll be giving you a spare DC to use in case of emergency. Got it?”

“Got it!”, she replied with that stillness that meant that he had her full attention and was waiting for some sort of dismissal.

Funny that she did that. They hadn’t taught her military etiquette.

“Something else”, he went on, letting her know that he required more of her time. She gave a curt nod, impatiently spurring him on. “Out there, I’m a Sergeant. _The_ Sergeant, which means that you do as I say, and you do it immediately because your _life_ depends on it. Once I say so: there’s no banter, no jokes, and no teasing; even if the others are doing it. They have experience, you don’t. So I want you to stick close to us, go with whoever we tell you to go and keep mostly out of the way. Understood?”

He could see that he had succeeded in putting some fear in her.

Good. Fear would keep her alive.

“Yes… sir?”

The question wasn’t because she was indecisive, it was because she had attempted a salute. Still: there was no amusement in her expression, only expectancy as to if that was the kind of response he wanted. Hunter saw this, and couldn’t help but ease up a bit. He gently corrected the height of her hand and gave her a smile and a nod of dismissal. Her lips twitched to smile back briefly and she dropped her arm, still standing around to see if he had something else to add.

Instead, he ruffled her curls, eliciting a weak complain from her.

“And if you’re scared or don’t know what to do; just duck and wait for us.”

Their change in demeanour almost gave her whiplash.

Now clad in an amalgamation of what had been Crosshair’s and Tech’s armour, she watched their laid-back attitude be tucked away; bodies shifting into ready tautness. It dawned on her that she had probably met them at their most relaxed. They were soldiers and she was about to witness them do their job. Her skin tingled with excitement, but her heart thudded with anxiety. Ducky had no idea what would happen, but she wanted to believe she would be safe with them.

After an hour of trekking through the wild, Hunter made some sort of hand signal, and everybody hushed. Dani was thrown off for a second, but she caught the vibe and passed the time observing the wildlife without straying from the group.

Sometime later Hunter slowed down his pace and made more hand signals. She didn’t understand shit, but Wrecker nudged her and made a clear gesture with his head that surely meant ‘follow me’.

Seeing that he trotted with his body lowered, she mimicked him until they were well hidden between the bushes. Beyond the vegetation surrounding them, she could see some sort of low building that seemed to stick out of a side of the cliff that rose in front of them. Outside, what at first sight looked like very slim humanoids but at second glance she realized were what she supposed were the droids the others had talked about wheeled _floating_ carts, packed with something that wasn’t quite what Guilla had gave her, but was close enough to think that it must be unrefined spice.

Ducky turned to Wrecker again, giving him a questioning tilt of her head. He put a finger over where his lips were hidden under the helmet, and spoke quietly.

Well, as quietly as he was able.

“It will begin soon. Stay behind me, got it?”

“Got it”, she nodded, and fidgeted a bit in place, nervousness spiking.

The first shot was Crosshair’s, and it blew a droid’s head off.

The noise made Dani gasp and jerk. Wrecker patted her arm to nudge her out of her shock as he stood up and charged, blaster going off.

She scrambled to follow him. It felt stupid, chasing the noise, the danger. Wrecker’s delighted roars brought her some ease, but also made her frown. So much for gesturing ‘be quiet’ to her.

Dani glanced to a side to see Hunter decapitating a droid.

“Holy shit!”, she couldn’t help herself.

Crosshair was picking out the droids trying to retreat into the building, while Tech took care of those closest that were out of Hunter’s immediate range. He glanced at her and gestured for her to move along with Wrecker, who just body-slammed a droid and practically turned it into a fossil stuck to the cliff’s rock. Ducky hurried to rendezvous with him with a startled jerk.

They converged again to enter the building. Hunter and Tech slipped in first, with Crosshair standing over them. More shots rang. Luna’s body twitched with each of them, but the noise was… funny.

_Pew pew guns…_

She knew better than to relax. She could also hear the frizzling of the material the bolts impacted on. She had no wish to get burned, and suddenly felt very grateful for the provided armour.

The squad was already making their way deeper into the facility, shooting down everything in their way. Dani had to watch her steps to avoid tripping over the _scrap_ left in their wake, eyes darting over the few intact droid parts left.

The heads were kinda cute. Their backpacks too.

“Dani!”, Hunter warned, and she hurried to catch up with them.

“Sarge”, Wrecker pleaded upon seeing a corridor packing with droids.

“You hanging okay?”, the Sergeant asked her.

“Yes, sir!”

“Tag with Tech now. Wrecker, you can go.”

“YES!”, the tank cheered, and turned to Ducky. “Hold this for me!”

“Wait what?”, she blurted out as he dropped his blaster in her arms. “What are you doing?!”

“TIME TO RELEASE THE WRECKING BALL!!!!”, he hollered, and bodily charged down the hall.

Dani watched, jaw hanging open in a mix of awe and bewilderment.

Tech nudged her with an elbow, snapping her out of it. It was kind of hard to tear her eyes away from where Wrecker was destroying the droid _with his bare hands_ , but she managed eventually and hurried to plaster herself to Tech, ducking at the disperse enemy fire soaring over their heads. She took the chance that they couldn’t really advance to kick weakly at the arm of a deactivated droid.

Yep: as solid as she had thought it would be.

Her attention fell now on the big-ass blaster clutched in her hands. She gasped in alarm when she realized she hadn’t checked the safety, but let out a relieved sigh upon checking that it was on.

The three commandos picked out the few stragglers Wrecker left, if any. Hunter signalled for the advance and they moved on quickly, still sparing a moment to check that Dani wasn’t lagging behind. She was doing a good enough job of staying out of trouble for now.

“Wooo!”, he cheered when there was nothing left standing to smash, and strode back to Ducky, reaching for his weapon. “What did you think of that?”, he asked her, grin obvious even with his helmet covering it.

“I mean: the pun was good but the delivery could be better”, she snickered, handing him the blaster.

“Oh, you have something?”, he challenged.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Guys, head on the mission”, Hunter scolded them.

“No fair! Wrecker talks all the time!”, she protested, but quickly took position behind Tech.

“That’s because it’s impossible to shut him up”, Crosshair snorted.

“Someone has to fill your edgy silences.”

They kept bantering as they moved to the next hallway, shooting down more and more droids.

“I’m not _edgy_. Hunter’s edgy!”

“In my outsider and most objective point of view: y’all edgy at different degrees”, she pitched her voice so they could hear her from where they had gotten ahead.

“Give us a ranking!”, Tech giggled.

“Please don’t”, the Sergeant seemed done with it all.

“Ranked from Edgy Lord to Baby: Crosshair, Hunter, Wrecker, Tech.”

“HA! Told ya!”, Wrecker boosted.

“I’m not baby! I might have been before but you’re it now!”, Tech complied over his shoulder before simultaneously shooting down two droids.

“No Tech, _you_ ’re baby.”

“She’s right”, Hunter finally surrendered.

“No she ISN’T!”, he turned it into a battle cry and charged, barging past Wrecker and Crosshair to presumably riddle with blaster bolts the poor droids occupying the next room.

At least that was what seemed to have happened in the short span of time it had taken them to catch up with the slicer.

“…Am I still tagging with him?”, she tried to discreetly ask Hunter after contemplating the destruction in the room.

“I’ve found the security room”, Tech announced proudly, going to sit on a chair and browse through security cameras feedback. “Looks like we don’t have much work left.”

“Hm. You staying here?”, the Sergeant asked him.

“I mean. You can handle those”, he shrugged, showing him the clips of straggler droids wandering around the small mine.

Hunter turned to Dani.

“How are you hanging on?”

“Good”, she blurted out on autopilot.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m no—”

She had to stop herself there because yes: her hands were quaking.

“I—“, she stared down at her hands, surprised. “I don’t _feel_ afraid…!”

“I know”, he put a hand on her shoulder and squished lightly. It helped. “It’s the adrenaline. Sit down and take deep breaths: you two are staying here. Wrecker, Cross! Let’s go!”

Ducky stood there, suddenly dazed, for a moment; but quickly agreed that sitting down was a good idea, so she turned to settle herself on the seat closer to Tech.

“Drink some water”, he said, pausing a moment in whatever he was doing on the computers to direct an assessing glance her way. “It helps.”

With a heavy huff, she slung off her backpack and zipped it open, taking out her canteen and taking a sip without any more fanfare. She took a few deep breaths, as Hunter had suggested, and leaned back to rest against the chair.

“How’re you doing?”, Tech asked without ceasing his typing.

“That was… intense. More intense than what I was aware it was being”, she admitted, closing her eyes for a moment.

She had a small headache: a nagging feeling.

“It happens. That’s also why battlefield dehydration is so dangerous: you might as well be dry as a raisin but won’t notice until you pass out.”

Dani laughed at the comparison lightly, but it died quickly, well aware that it wasn’t a laughing matter. Still, Tech was pleased that he had managed to make her laugh with his joke, and typed away with a small smile.

Ducky still had her eyes closed in hopes of lessening the headache, but it kept bothering her. Her eyebrows were furrowed in the growing discomfort, and she became more and more nervous and tensed until she couldn’t take it anymore and she opened her eyes.

A flash took her sight away, replaced by what she had already experienced when the group had left for that first mission with her aboard: everything was dark and she couldn’t see any walls, not even the ground under her feet; but there were four bright lights that were clearly the others and some sort of… different ones, weaker but not like weakened people, just—

Her eyesight returned with another flash, in time to spot an armed droid turning at the door.

Dani gasped loudly in terror. Tech immediately turned to check whatever had alerted her, but he had left one of his DCs on the surface of the interface and the other was holstered in an inconvenient shooting angle.

The droid was already in firing position, and he was still reaching for the weapon.

“Dani—!”, he called, strained, seeing that he was being too slow and she was frozen.

But his voice snapped her out of it, and despite the futileness of it, she extended an arm to put it between her and the droid.

It raised into the air with the motion of her hand, blaster shot flying over their heads and blowing up a screen. Ducky flinched and screamed, fear making her muscles tense up.

Tech watched as the droid started vibrating more and more violently. He could barely aim at it.

“Dani”, he called. “Dani, it’s okay, you can stop!”

She stopped too late.

The droid exploded from the inside out, shrapnel flying in all directions; and all Tech could do was cover his eyes with an arm and tackle Dani with the other looped around her hips.

She screamed again when they hit the floor, but the commando noticed that the shockwave hadn’t been strong enough to rattle his senses. Only a second after falling he was pushing up on his knees and checking around for more threats.

“Tech! Tech, do you copy?!”, Crosshair barked through the comms.

“I copy”, he replied with an exhale.

“We’re coming to your position! Sitrep!”, Hunter ordered.

“There was a straggler, but it’s… taken care of”, he explained slowly, turning to check on Ducky. She was sitting up, visibly shaken up. He had seen it first, so when her eyes slipped to the chunk of shrapnel embedded into her chest plate he was ready to hold her still. “It’s okay, you’re okay”, he started to chant, holding first her shoulders and then her cheeks when she started to gasp for air. “Dani, does it hurt? Is it touching you?”

It took her a moment, but she blinked in realization.

“…No”, she was able to reply after gulping down.

Tech let out a shaky, relieved sigh.

“Good. That’s good. See? That’s what armour is good for”, he tried to smile, and promptly yanked the shrapnel out of the armour, letting it fall to the ground with a loud clatter.

The running steps that had been approaching came to a halt with a loud screech, and then they were all together again.

“Are you hurt?”, Hunter asked, already striding towards them.

“We’re fine”, Tech reassured, gaze drifting to the smoking remnants of the droid.

The others followed his eyes, spotting it too.

“…Your DCs don’t do that”, Cross noted.

“You made it explode?! Without _me_?”, Wrecker looked sincerely betrayed.

Tech turned to Dani, who was also watching what had been the droid, mute; and then glanced at Hunter, awaiting answers tensely.

“ _She_ made it explode.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm... I was hoping to expand more the BB's badassery without Dani, but well... there will be time for that


	11. Danger Stranger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As our beloved Peter B. Parker said: there's no better way of learning than under intense life-threatening pressure!  
> Featuring Dani not being able to catch a break!

The empty charger floated up into the air.

For a blissful moment, it seemed like that was it: perfectly held up and stable.

But it only took a second more for it to start vibrating uncontrollably.

Everybody ducked back behind the crate used as cover as the charger exploded, shreds flying off.

And with that, it had been ten items that hadn’t survived Dani’s attempts at Force-lifting.

“WOOOOOOO!!!”, Wrecker cheered.

“…Okay; so it seems it isn’t much of an isolated event, it’s more of a… constant”, Tech said diplomatically, checking his datapad. “You, uh, tried all we said, right?”

“Yeah”, she answered, voice tight and low in a way that made them uneasy.

It was the tone of someone very frustrated and upset.

Better to just burst the bubble and be done with it.

“Taking it easy?”, he started to list.

“Yeah.”

“Thinking of the sea?”

“Yeah”, her voice was tighter, her shoulders coiling on herself.

“Going by gut feeling?”

“Yeah.”

“Doing the opposite of what you were doing?”

“Yeah.”

Tech glanced at his brothers, chancing that Ducky wasn’t facing him to shrug helplessly at them. He had run out of things to list.

“Hm… We’ll find you more things to practice with”, Hunter mussed, softly stroking his stubble. “I mean: we KNOW it’s a thing Jedi do, you’ll eventually get it, I’m sure—”

“But why would you want to _lift_ things when you can just make them explode?! This is SO much cooler!”, Wrecker beamed, a wild smile on his face.

He was so caught up in his glee, that he didn’t realize he had succeeded in setting Dani off.

Her head whipped in his direction, the pressure behind her lips about to be released.

“What is WRONG with you?!”, she roared, her voice nearly reaching Wrecker’s levels of loudness, to their surprise. It would be intimidating, if not for the fact that she was already crying. “This isn’t cool, it’s _terrifying_!”, she surged to her feet, fists clenched tight.

The others were already braced, ready to restrain her if she lashed out.

“I blew up that droid _because it startled me_!”, she shrieked, tears pouring down her cheeks. “What if _you_ startle me one day?!”

“Oh”, Wrecker blinked in realisation.

There was a collective wince in the group. Yeah, the result of that happening would be… messy.

“I hate this!”, she choked out. “I hate this, it’s scary!”

The admission was done in between pants, eyes puffy and shoulders bouncing with each breath.

Wrecker, the only one making direct eye-contact with her, was lost in the fear in her eyes and memories of his own, and was unable to come up with anything to say on time. As soon as Hunter tried to reach out for her, Dani jerked and cloaked herself, running off.

“Dani!”, the Sergeant called after her, turning in the direction she was leaving.

Tech put a hand on his shoulder, preventing him from going after her.

“Maybe… we should give her a moment to sort herself out”, he suggested at Hunter’s angry frown. “I don’t think chasing her is going to help.”

He sighed his reluctant agreement, brining a hand up to rub at the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. If that was a headache coming, he hoped he could bring it down before it got bad.

“I just—We should have left the planet as soon as we were done with the mission. We’ve been here for too long”, he mumbled, worryingly turning to stare at the woods Ducky had fled to.

“So what? We’re really going to stay here and wait for her to be done with her teenage angst?”, Crosshair grumbled around a toothpick, pretty resigned to do that.

“Cross”, Wrecker warned, his voice unnaturally subdued as he finally emerged from his unsettling silence.

“I mean: I get what she says, I get that she could sneeze and kill us, but if she really wanted to leave she would have grabbed her backpack first. Yet, there she is: running off with nothing but her pocketknife and phone. Ohhhhhh she’s got her phone! Let’s call her and ask her if she wants us to drop off her things.”

“We’re NOT leaving her here”, Hunter growled.

“Even if she wants to?”

“She wants to go to Coruscant, and this is not it.”

“So we’re kidnappers now. Neat.”

“Cross”, Wrecker grumbled again.

“Eh, let’s go grab her. It’s not like we have much time to lounge about. I thought she knew that, but…”

“We’re not just dragging her back to the ship!”, Tech argued.

“No! No, of course not”, he turned to Hunter. “Just point me where she is. I’ve got this.”

“ _You_ ’ve got this?”, the slicer asked, clearly sceptical.

“I either got this or I’m about to die. Are we going or what?”, he pressed the Sergeant.

“Cross, are you sure about this?”, Hunter asked with a worried grimace. “Don’t do anything risky. You have to be _tactful_.”

“Let’s just say I’m betting on this. You guys know I don’t bet if I don’t think I’m going to win.”

There was a moment of silence as they glanced at each other or fidgeted a bit in place.

“Alright”, Hunter sighed. “But I’ll be close, and if I think things are going south, I’m going in.”

“Yes, mom”, the sniper rolled his eyes, already walking to the woods.

“She’s there. She’s not cloaked”, Hunter pointed beyond the trees.

“I see her”, Crosshair confirmed with a hum. “You staying here?”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

Hunter caught his arm before he could step away.

“Don’t do anything stupid, okay?”, he asked with a mix of concern and gruffness.

Cross held his gaze for a moment.

“I _do_ need you to trust me with this”, he said softly.

The Sergeant’s brow creased with concern, but he let out a steading sigh, squishing his brother’s arm briefly.

“Always”, he replied, and let him go.

Crosshair gave him a thankful nod before stepping through the bushes. He didn’t try to be sneaky, so when he plopped down to sit on a rock by the one Ducky was sitting, he knew she was deliberately ignoring him.

That grated, deep inside.

“Hey, brat.”

“Go away”, she sobbed.

Her cheeks were marred with tears.

“So… you’re scared?”, he asked, almost impersonal, detached.

She sucked in a sharp breath, almost a hiss.

“What’s your deal?!”, Dani spat at him, voice shaky and cracking. “One moment you’re antagonizing me, the next you’re tolerating me, the next you’re aiming at me with a gun…! And now that turns out that I’m even _more_ dangerous you come here?! To do what, exactly?!”

She managed to articulate, breathing hard by the time she was done.

Crosshair narrowed his eyes at her, considering for a moment.

“You care for them”, he finally said, eyes still narrowed as if he were trying very hard to figure her out. “I think you’re scared not for you, but for them.”

Ducky jerked backwards, jolted by his words and unsure as to where was he going with that.

“My deal is”, he went on. “That I don’t get why you do that.”

Dani tilted her head, grimacing in utter confusion.

“I mean: it’s all fun and laughs now, but what do you think will happen when you _leave_?”, he said that last word slowly, making it feel like a sentence. “Who do you think is going to have to take their minds off of you when you move on? Answer: _me_. And I don’t get why they had gotten so comfortable with you either, why would they think that it’s ever going to be anyone more than us four. It’s not! You’re a passenger, that’s been stablished since you stepped in! So if you care so much about them that you would run away to not accidentally kill them, why are you giving them false hopes?”, he spat, palms up in a gesture of cluelessness and an expression of wariness and faint disgust.

“I—“, she stuttered, not even knowing where to begin to unpack that. “Why wouldn’t I be kind to them? Why wouldn’t I cherish every moment I can, even knowing that they’ll fade away?”, she tried to make him understand, voice still shaky.

He just shook his head with a frustrated snarl.

“I can’t believe you’re so selfish. We’re just a means to an end to you—”

“That’s not true!”

“—you’re going to trade us for your father, who probably has been _dead_ for years now—”

“Shut up! You don’t know that!”, she cried.

“—utterly pointless! Nobody’s going to help you find him out there! You should have stayed on—”

“SHUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, she screeched at his face for what felt like an eternity, until her lungs and eyes burned and she had to gasp for air.

It took her a moment to be able to see past her blurred vision, furiously scrubbing the tears away as she panted and hiccupped uncontrollably.

Her eyes cleared to the sight of Crosshair’s smug smile, much to her already pent up anger.

“If you didn’t blow me up after that, I don’t think there’s going to be any accidents”, he had the nerve to shrug nonchalantly.

Dani’s burning rage was snuffled out into cold anger, caught reeling between the hurt caused by his words and the relief brought by the realization.

She hadn’t killed him.

He had pushed all of her buttons _on purpose_ and she hadn’t killed him.

“You son of a bitch!”, she roared, looking around wildly until she spotted a rock and went to pick it up.

Ducky yeeted it at him, but Crosshair didn’t have much trouble dodging it, if at least wide-eyed with surprise.

“You don’t get to talk shit about my _tatay_ and then tell me you did it for me!”

“Well. It does rule out what you were scared of, doesn’t it?”

“Fuck you!”, she threw another stone at him. “You’re an asshole!”

He dodged that one too, but just blinked at her, lips pursed; as if waiting for the tantrum of a petulant child to die down.

“What, you’re not even going to apologize?!”

His eyes averted for a moment, staring at some point of the ground before going back to her. His shoulders rose notably as he took a deep breath.

“Have you thought about the possibility, though?”, he asked.

Cross’ tone wasn’t teasing or snarky anymore. It was carefully neutral, but that still wasn’t an apology.

Ducky bristled. No, she hadn’t thought about that. She hadn’t thought about that because that meant facing the possibility that she might be alone in the universe.

That she might have _no one_.

Just that hint of it made her feel like the ground under her feet was caving in to let her fall. Alone. Forever.

She opened her mouth to try and spit something at him: an insult, a demand to shut up or just say sorry or—

But nothing came out, the air catching in her throat.

The fact that Crosshair seemed to pity her made her feel hot with embarrassment.

“Let’s get back to the _Marauder_ ”, he sighed, and turned around, taking a few steps before stopping to check and find her sitting again on the same rock as before. “Dani. Come on; you can brood in your room. We have places to go.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes”, she managed to grumble.

“Two.”

“Five.”

“One.”

“Five!”

“Brat”, he sighed so dramatically that she could _hear_ him roll his eyes.

“Tooth- _prick_!”, she called over her shoulder, satisfied enough when he kept walking away without a reply.

Crosshair had no interest in keeping up the fight with her. He would be already busy dealing with—

“That”, Hunter jumped on him, notably closer than where he had left him. “was one of the biggest dick-moves you have ever pulled”, he said dryly.

“But it saved us precious time of coming up with pep-talks and reassurances that she wouldn’t hurt us, didn’t it? Actions are more meaningful that words and all that. She won’t hurt us. She _can’t_. It just… isn’t in her.”

Hunter raised an eyebrow.

“Does that mean that you’re okay with her walking around with her pocketknife, then?”

Crosshair scowled noncommittally and tried to weasel past him.

“Hey”, the Sergeant stopped him with a firm grasp on his shoulder, turning him so they were eye to eye. “You pushed her too far, there.”

They held their gazes for a tense moment.

“Who was going to tell her? You? Wrecker? Give me a break! I’m not going to apologize for preparing her for the worst!”

Crosshair shook off his arm, and had barely started to stomp his way back to the ship when Dani’s shrill rang through the forest.

They broke into a dead sprint.

Ducky had just turned from her apparent victory over Crosshair to calm down and maybe enjoy the landscape a little more, but suddenly there was someone who wasn’t there before and she gasped, startled.

It seemed—They seemed to be a woman, but Dani didn’t want to assume. Their skin was incredibly pale, and they were wearing a long dress with a ridiculously big boob-window for Ducky’s taste, but hey how they dressed was none of her business.

But by the way the hairs on her nape were curling, she knew not to go for a hug.

“I—hello?”, she tried, because the other was just standing there, watching her from about twenty meters away.

“You’re very good at this”, they drawled, a chilling smile growing steadily on their face. “If you hadn’t just flared, I would have thought you were a Force-null.”

Well.

That was ominous.

“What?”, she blurted out of nervousness and raising panic.

“Don’t try to deny it. I’ve found you”, they raised their chin in pride. “But others might be close. Come, child”, they extended a hand for her to reach. “Come, and me and my Master will give you all the power you could ever desire!”

“No thanks”, Dani said, carefully setting her feet on the ground and bracing herself. “I’m good.”

Their expression morphed into anger in record time, hands flying behind their back to pluck out something, and then there was a sound she had never heard before and the light of two red laser sticks.

Oh, she had read about those. From the meagre information Tech had managed to gather for her: there were two sides; Sith and Jedi, and they both used laser beams of doom to fight. Ducky didn’t have very clear which side they were on, but the first impression was clearly not very good. Anyways, it was irrelevant at the moment as the images of what those weapons could do flashed before her eyes: limbs chopped off with one swipe, metal melted apart effortlessly—

And now there were TWO lightsabers headed her way.

She screamed before she realised it wasn’t a very beneficial thing to do, and hurried to cloak herself and roll out of their way.

The assailant had to stop to not lash out at the air and looked around for a moment, shock turning to creepy awe.

“You’ll do for a good assassin, once we’re through you…”, they drawled, and closed their eyes slowly.

Ducky was watching them from what she deemed a safe distance, frozen as she tried to figure out if running to the _Havoc Marauder_ would be good or bad. She didn’t want to lead a hostile stranger to the others, but—No, she was cloaked, it was fine, she just had to—

“Found you”, they lilted lowly.

And then they were dashing towards where Dani stood.

Three consecutive shots were fired. Two were effortlessly deflected, and the third blew up a chunk of the ground across their feet when they had to halt to avoid it.

“That’s a kriffing Sith!”, Crosshair bellowed.

“Clones”, the Sith growled with so much spite that Ducky scowled at her.

Another shot was deflected. And another, and another, as they advanced towards the sniper.

Dani’s phone vibrated in her pocket, and that snapped her out of her shock.

 _Cover your eyes and run to the ship_ , the text sent my Hunter read.

Cover your eyes? What fo—

Movement beyond the screen caught her attention and she turned to it in time to see Crosshair diving into the cover of the bushes and Hunter emerging from it, tossing something at the approaching warrior.

Ducky obliged.

The manoeuvre seemed to catch them off guard, but they still reacted fast enough to send the flash bang back with a push of the Force.

“Shit!”

Hunter couldn’t do a thing to avoid it as the cannister was flung directly into his helmet.

Even pressing his eyes tightly shut and fumbling to cover his head with his arms, the blinding light slipped right through.

Hunter did his best to bite down the scream that wanted to tore out of his throat, falling backwards as what had just been a minor headache flared into a migraine, and he fell backwards as the disorientation settled in.

“ _Kriff_!”, Crosshair recovered quickly, rushing to grab under the Sergeant’s armpits to drag him away from the looming Sith above them.

Then it was as if a weight had been lifted off his skin, and he yanked Hunter out of the way of a swinging lightsaber. Ventress’ eyes flickered over them without ever focusing, and Cross knew Dani was cloaking them.

“ARGH!”, she growled in frustration, and brought an arm back to do a wide swoop.

“Hey!”, Dani’s voice called, and the sniper would kill her himself he swore—

But she succeeded in driving the Sith away.

“ _Fierfek_!”, he spat, readjusting his grip on his brother to be able to activate his wristcomm. “Tech! Start up the engines, Hunter’s down and there’s a Sith after Dani!”

Luckily, it seemed like that long skirt Asajj wore wasn’t that comfortable to run through the wilderness.

They were both enhancing their running; Ducky could tell because she hadn't managed to ditch the other, and despite being stubbornly tailing her, the Sith wasn’t close to catching her.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t go to the ship, that guy had lightsabers and could destroy it! Could kill everybody! But she couldn’t just run and never go back, her stuff was there! And why was the Sith still behind her? She was cloaking herself!

She tripped with a root and barely managed to regain her balance and keep running. She decided to leave those questions for later.

But why couldn’t she hide? She was doing it, she _knew_ she was doing it! Was the Sith like Hunter? Or was she doing it wrong?

The ground under her feet started to incline, and Dani realized she was running uphill, her pursuer still behind her. Her heart beat wildly, lungs starting to ache. She couldn’t help to wonder where were the others. Did they know she was in trouble?

Did they know she needed them?

Through her thoughts and harsh breaths, the sound of a ship’s engine reached her, and Ducky’s heart clenched painfully.

They were taking off. They were _leaving_.

She couldn’t stop her lips from twisting downwards in a sorrowful expression, a sob threatening to mess up her breathing even more.

But still, she ran. She ran because it was the steadiest thing to do at the moment, but as the grief turned to anger, the idea of turning around and facing her pursuer solidified with terrifying determination. Yes; if that’s what it took to be left in peace, to be left alone, she would turn and fight. She would turn and kill. She would _maul_ the—

And suddenly the trees were left behind her as she reached the wide top of a plateau, and the _Havoc Marauder_ was soaring the sky right beside her.

The side door was open, Wrecker braced in it.

“Lady!”, he called, and stretched out an arm.

 _Are you fucking nuts?!_ , she wanted to scream.

There was a very considerable vertical fall between the plateau and the ship.

“Jump, Dani!”, Wrecker called again. “I’ll catch you!”

And truth be told: with an approaching equally long fall before her and Ventress behind her, she didn’t have much to lose.

Taking in a shaky breath, she managed to speed up a bit more.

“NO!”, the Sith snarled behind her; close, too close.

Dani kicked with a leg to a side, launching herself out of Ventress’ lunge way and towards the ship. Suspended in the air, she reached back for Wrecker, so out of her mind with fear that she didn’t know if her heart was beating too fast or not beating at all.

Wrecker caught her by the waist, looping an arm around her waist and pulling her inside the ship to slam the door close with his free fist.

“I’VE GOT HER!”, he called down the hall to the cockpit, and the ship immediately veered, flying away from the plateau before heading for space.

He could feel her frantic heartbeat from the fist placed _on her hip_.

“I’ve got you”, he repeated, softer, gently guiding her to sit on the floor. “We’ve got you.”


	12. Cold Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby's first Force-healing :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, my need to be soft with the clones is OVERWHELMING--

The _Havoc Marauder_ would be unsettlingly quiet, if the silence weren’t imposed for a good reason.

As soon as she had calmed down enough, Tech had appeared to show her a datapad, where a brief explanation on Hunter’s condition was written.

Since then, they had been communicating via texts and gestures.

“That was Asajj Ventress. A Sith apprentice and assassin”, he explained her via message, eyes rising as soon as he was done to gauge her reaction.

“She was creepy”, Dani messaged back with a frown. “And she knew where I was even when I was cloaked. Is she like Hunter?”

“I doubt it. I’ve read Force-sensitives can kind of… _sense_ each other.”

“Is Hunter a Force-sensitive too?”, she asked, raising an eyebrow at Tech.

“No”, he replied quickly, but his eyes jumped around in thought.

“You sure?”, she pressed.

Tech pouted at her.

“I had this theory that Hunter could sense you due to his genetic enhancements”, he typed, looking very focused on it. “For what we talked; he did stop seeing you, just like us. So I thought you just could hide from eyes, but not from electromagnetic fields. I guess you don’t know how to hide from the Force either.”

“She said I flared. She said she noticed me because I flared, but if I hadn’t done it she wouldn’t have known I can use the Force. So maybe I _know_ how to hide from the Force, but I slipped”, she typed back, the thought seeming coherent in her mind.

“It could be”, Tech nodded slowly. “Do you know why you could have slipped?”

“Yeah”, she pressed her lips in a thin line. “Cross was bullying me.”

“I wasn’t _bullying_ you”, he finally chimed in after reading their conversation in silence all this time, rolling his eyes. “I was putting you under pressure to test your control.”

Ducky blinked at the message for a moment.

“And I slipped. But not how you thought I would.”

“Hm”, Cross voiced in realization, and the others quickly brought a finger over their lips with angry looks. “Sorry, sorry”, he wrote.

Tech let out a not-quite sigh.

“So there’s hope that Ventress can’t track you. Do you feel fine now? Something off?”

“I feel fine. Normal”, she shrugged.

“Good. We’ll have to keep an eye out in case she is tailing us, though. Let us know if you have a bad feeling or something. You might be able to feel her coming too.”

“Now that I know how she feels, I hope so. Did I tell you guys that I can sense people around me?”, she added, because if she didn’t bring it up she might forget later.

“You did not”, Crosshair wrote, fidgeting slightly.

“Can you?”, Wrecker piped up, bored out of his mind with the lack of activity.

“Yeah, it’s like: my vision blacks out, but then I see spots of light and I can know which one is you because of how you feel… I think I also sensed the droid that I blew up? It felt weaker than how people feel like. When those raiders tried to steal the ship I also sensed them coming and that’s why I freaked out before they got there. I know this explanation is very shitty but that’s the best I’ve got”, she shrugged sheepishly.

“Can you also sense the terrain around you?”, Tech asked without missing a beat.

“No terrain. I actually don’t see walls at all.”

“Can’t wait to see that”, Crosshair successfully contained his snort.

“Tooth-prick”, she shot.

“Brat”, he shot back.

“NO fights. NO noises”, Tech reminded them angrily.

Dani quickly deflated.

“I can’t even listen to music with my earphones on?”, she asked again with a pleading look.

“I’m sorry, but no. Hunter will hear it and his migraine will get worse”, he replied sympathetically.

Ducky grimaced in worry.

“Is it safe to leave him alone?”

“We’ve already given him painkillers”, Crosshair explained. “And with us being there, he would hear our breaths, our hearts. Any extra noise will make it worse on him.”

She squirmed a bit where she sat, but she didn’t try to argue.

“Does this happen often?”, she asked instead.

“It comes and goes. Usually further apart, but that flash bang in close range set it off”, Wrecker wrote. “He’ll be fine in a couple days.”

“I’m glad to hear that. But still, I can’t help to think how much it would suck to have to go through that alone”, she replied, bringing her knees up to her chest, crestfallen.

The Bad Batchers exchanged looks.

“It’s for his own good”, Tech tried.

“You know better”, she quickly typed, wanting to let them know that she wouldn’t do anything they didn’t approve of.

That did seem to bring them some ease.

“What are we going to do now?”, she asked.

“We’re looking for a planet with safe lakes to swim in”, Tech typed faster than anyone else. “Having his head underwater helps Hunter’s headaches. We’re stopping there to speed up his recovery, and it’s also a good idea to wait out there in case we’re being tracked. Wouldn’t do any good to throw ourselves in a mission and end up between a horde of droids and a Sith.”

“Sorry”, she wrote without making eye contact.

“Not your fault”, Wrecker chimed in.

She gave him a sad half smile, and exited the chat to play in her phone instead.

“Hey”, a private message from Wrecker popped up in her screen. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he seemed too focused to notice. “I know what it feels like. Having a scary power. It took me weeks before I could spar without accidentally breaking someone’s bones”, he wrote, hunched on himself in shame. “So, uh, I’m not really sure if this is rele—”

“Can I hug you?”, she asked before he could finish to write the last part.

He blinked in shock at the screen, and when he looked up Dani was already staring at him, expectant.

Wrecker put the datapad aside and spread his arms.

She looped her arms around his neck and he carefully put his around her back, letting her settle her temple against his and feeling her lean her weight on him. It felt warm, and wanted, and right; so he too leaned a bit of his weight on her, reciprocating.

When they let go of each other, Dani settled between his legs, back against his chest, and taught him how to play on her phone in silence.

Tech stepped out of the medbay and Ducky perked up from where she had sat down to wait.

“He’s feeling a bit better”, he texted her. “You can see him, but avoid as many noises/words as possible.”

She gave him a thumbs up, and he offered her a hand to help her up.

He wished he had taught her hand signals, so she could have a conversation with the Sergeant just as he had: with the lights dimmed at maximum and completely silent. Tech had given him his report on the situation, and Hunter had frowned at the retelling of Dani’s concern. _He_ had been the one worried about her.

After washing the pan placed on the floor by his head and helping him drink and eat a bit, they had talked.

 _Let in_ , he had signalled.

 _Confirmation request_ , Tech had signalled back, unsure.

 _Confirm_ , he had replied, closing his eyes.

Well. At least he knew what he was teaching her next.

Ducky swished the door open only the indispensable to be able to slip through the gap and closed it back, taking the lightest steps she could thanks to the socks she was wearing.

As her eyes adjusted to the near-complete darkness of the room, she was able to make out Hunter’s form in the bed, his trusty red bandana lowered and resting over his eyes to block out the light, presumably.

“Hey”, he croaked lowly.

“Hey”, she whispered in reply, mimicking his volume as she lowered herself carefully on the stool placed by the cot.

After only a moment of hesitation, she reached out to rest her hand over his and squeezed it gently. Hunter turned his palm up to squeeze back

“Okay?”, she asked.

He gave a noncommittal shrug.

“You?”

“Well.”

“I’m glad”, he said earnestly, unable to help a grimace of pain at a sudden jab in his head.

“I leave?”, her anxious voice suggested.

Hunter was now glad of Basic not being her first language. If she knew hand signals it would be ideal, but since she had learned their language not long ago, she wasn’t shy about shedding the fancy phrasing and going straight to the point.

“No”, he patted her hand lightly in reassurance. “Company.”

“’Kay.”

He felt her get settled, the hand over his relaxing as they fell into a comfortable silence and he dozed off.

Another stab of pain prevented him from resting.

Force, he was _exhausted_.

Dani pursed her lips, frowning in concern. She had asked Tech and she knew Hunter wasn’t due for another dose of painkillers for a few hours, but it obviously wasn’t enough. She didn’t know much about migraines, either: no one around her had been prone to have them, but…

“Massage?”, she offered quietly, unable to think of anything else.

He shrugged weakly again. He had tried that some time ago with his brothers, and it hadn’t made much of a difference, but even if it didn’t work it would probably help distract him from the ache and ease Dani’s mind.

He heard the stool rolling a short distance, Luna’s hand slipping off of his, and his fingers twitched a bit at the loss.

And then both her hands glided over his skull, fingers gently sinking in his hair to apply careful pressure on his temples and rub slow circles on them.

It was nothing to write home about, but her hands were… warm. Warm and soft and caring, and Hunter couldn’t help but lean into the touch. Ducky obliged, resting more of her hands on his head and keeping up with the movement.

Dani was just glad that he seemed a bit more comfortable as she tried to breathe through the weird sensation that spread from her chest to her arms and hands, praying that she wasn’t having a heart attack for no good reason. It wasn’t that she felt _bad_ , but it was weird. The warmth she felt had seemed to bloom out of her spontaneously, and for a moment she had feared she might have caught a space bug and she was about to topple over. But she didn’t feel like fainting, so maybe it was just that she was in a bad angle and the muscles in her arms were strained.

Yeah, the last one seemed more likely.

To distract herself from the other possibilities, she risked a full sentence.

“I love your hair”, she whispered, marvelling at the texture.

To be honest, his hair had called her attention since the beginning. To her opinion, it was the most appealing hairstyle in the group, since Wrecker seemed to shave his head, Crosshair seemed to be prematurely grey and wear a bowl-cut and Tech had… that.

Maybe she would be able to sneak some suggestions at some point. If they reached that level of trust.

Trust. That was the reason why she hadn’t even stared at Hunter’s hair for more than what was necessary. But now that they were there (and that they had actually taken to ruffle her hair affectionally), she wanted to tell him.

Hunter hummed sleepily.

“Love yours”, he mumbled.

“Trade?”, she suggested with a mischievous smile on her face and in her voice.

“Never”, he chuckled briefly.

Dani’s shoulders bounced twice with her silent laugh.

Hunter decided not to tell her that she laughed in hypersonic and he could, in fact, hear her.

He woke up to the familiar motions of the _Havoc Marauder_ landing.

 _Gentler this time, thank the Force_ , he exhaled, and could have cried of relief when he realized he had been in a deep sleep. Hunter stirred, bringing a hand up to pry his bandana away from his eyes and test his current sensitivity to light, when he noticed his head was turned to a side and his cheek resting on something padded but bumpy.

That something _tensed_ at his movement, and he became aware of the young heartbeat by his side.

“Dani”, he spoke, throat dry.

“Hi. Okay? Better?”

The words didn’t feel like knifes being dug into his brain, so he was positive.

“Yes”, he croaked, and pulled the bandana away from his face, blinking at the dim light.

His eyes didn’t feel like they were being boiled.

Hm.

There was a slight pull from under his cheek, steering him away from his self-assessment, and finally realized that Dani’s hand was stuck under his face.

“Oh. Sorry”, he hissed, quickly rolling his head away to free her.

“S’okay”, she sighed, looking relieved as she shook her limb a bit to get the feeling back in it. “Didn’t want to wake you”, she whispered.

“You can… You can try longer sentences now. I’m feeling better”, Hunter said, sitting up and brining a hand to rub at his throat.

Ducky blinked at him.

“Do you want water?”, she asked carefully.

He still twitched a bit in discomfort, but it wasn’t a flinch.

She was offering him the water and a pill before he could answer.

“Gotta pee. Gonna call someone”, she said, and hurriedly slipped out of the room.

Hunter was still downing the painkiller when Crosshair entered.

“Hey”, he greeted lowly, testing.

“Hey”, he smiled at his brother.

“How’s the head?”

“…Better”, Hunter replied. It still felt heavy and a bit muddled, but it wasn’t killing him anymore. “How long has it been?”

“Two days since Ventress. Five hours since Dani visited you”, Crosshair crossed his legs and arms as he settled on the stool.

“Five?”, he blurted out, if at the surprise of having been able to sleep that long or at the mortification of having been asleep _on Dani’s hand_ that long; he wasn’t really sure. “I think I trapped her here for—”

“Oh, we know”, Cross stopped him with a very amused smirk. “We came to check on her and did the sensible thing: thank her for her sacrifice and leave her to her luck. Oh, you just rolled your eyes! You really must be feeling better.”

“I can’t believe you guys…”, the Sergeant muttered, covering his eyes in embarrassment with an arm.

“Hey, we offered alternatives. She didn’t want to risk waking you up. We didn’t want to risk it either. End of the story.”

Hunter blew out a long breath.

“We’ve found a nice lake. No dangerous fauna or flora in the water; at least not by what the records say. You up for it?”

“We aren’t being tailed?”, Hunter moved his arm to peek up at Crosshair.

“Not that we can tell. I’ll be keeping an eye out. In the meantime…”, he shrugged.

“Yeah”, the Sergeant sighed. “Okay.”

“Need me to get Wrecker?”, Cross stood up as the other sat up.

“No… but if you can help me…”

“’Course.”

He crouched so Hunter could snake an arm around his neck, and then carefully guided him towards the exit, making sure that his steps were steady.

The _Havoc Marauder_ was parked in the shadows projected by the curtain-like leaves of the trees around them. They were a safe distance away from the water, but not enough to take more than a sprint to get there. Dani and Tech were by the water, and they could hear their back-and-forth about the quantity of nutrients in the water based on the clarity of the liquid. Wrecker was close by, readying the fishing rod the Bad Batch had fixed up for themselves a while back, some branches gathered to light up in a fire later.

“I mean; it’s not crystal clear but it’s also not _disgusting_ , so I’d say it falls on the side of low organic matter concentration”, Ducky argued.

“It should be. We’re pretty up in the mountains, so the water here isn’t contaminated by the settlements downstream.”

“Nor by rotten leaves falling in the river. Organic matter decomposition happens so much faster in water.”

“Thanks to the fungus and bug friendly atmosphere that high humidity creates.”

“Yup. Think there will be big fishes?”

“Not enough to eat us, but enough to eat them.”

“…That first part unsettles me.”

“Fishes don’t eat people in your planet?”

“Only if they find a dead body, I think? I mean, sharks eat you if they mistake you for a seal, and that doesn’t happen much… We’re told to stay away from killer whales but those also eat seals and penguins and the like. There’re piranhas… I think they’re not picky? But they swarm on you, they’re not big enough to eat you quickly on their own.”

“Eugh”, Tech noised in disturbance.

“Indeed!”

Hunter huffed a quiet laugh at her cheerful tone as they finally reached them.

“How are you feeling, Sarge?”, Tech asked, voice low and soft.

“Better”, he was glad to be able to reply, eyes drifting to the calm waters with longing.

“Here. I’ll help you”, Crosshair offered, starting to pull Hunter’s blacks off.

Ducky startled a bit and turned around to wander off and offer privacy. She briefly wondered if they had swimsuits and wished she had taken hers when she was packing to leave Earth, but then saw Hunter walking into the water in his underwear (to her ease of mind).

“Oh”, she voiced in realization, the worry-free answer presenting to herself like an epiphany to the core simplicity of life.

With that solved, the excitement of bathing in an _alien lake_ bloomed in her, and Dani shed her tank top and cargo pants to leave them on a rock, testing the temperature of the water with her naked feet.

A full body shiver shook her body.

“It’s FREEZING!”, she gasped, watching with wide eyes as Hunter swam around, seemingly unbothered.

“You know how to swim?”, Wrecker asked from behind her.

Ducky turned around with a pout, finding him also stripped to his shorts.

“Of course I do! I’m an islande—”

Before she could finish the sentence, his hands clamped down around her waist, and next she knew she was high in the air, the sensation of gravity reclaiming her so sudden and unexpected that she screamed and barely had time to shut her mouth before she hit the water.

The coldness made her convulse, but not enough to stop her from swimming to the surface and taking a deep gulp of air, screaming out her complaining and betrayal. By the lake bed, Wrecker was laughing loudly.

“Dude!”, she half-whined half-awed. “How high did you throw me?!”

“About 10 meters!”, Tech supplied, soaking his feet as he sunbathed.

“Do it again!”, Dani beamed, already swimming back to him.

Wrecker drew in a tight, excited gasp.

“I’m going fishing”, Crosshair copped out of the affair, moving to perch on a big boulder by the lake, in the pleasant shadows of the trees.

Ducky stumbled out of the water, wet hair sticking to her skull and trying to curl as soon as the water’s weight let off enough and giddy smile still there when he reached Wrecker, who was waiting for her with offered hands. Dani raised a confused eyebrow at him.

“Bridal style”, he said enigmatically, and felt brave enough to add a wink. “Trust me.”

The next scream out of her was absolutely delighted.

“…Are you trying to get her used to this?”, Tech inquired.

“I mean. If we kept taking her with us on missions, I might have to give her a boost sometime.”

“How come you don’t take off your tiny shirt?”, Wrecker ventured the question later, after a long while of swimming and playing when they were finally resting on solid ground.

“Tiny…?”, she muttered, eyes narrowed in cluelessness, and she craned her neck to look down at her body from where she had been laying in the sun. “Ah. That’s called bras.”

“Huh.”

“Sportive bras, to be precise. They help keep my breasts pressed close to my chest so they don’t bother me when I run. Or jump. Or swim. So I wear them more or less for the same reason you wear your underwear.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh I get it! So you never get it off?”

“I do; when I sleep or when I know I’m not going to be doing anything strenuous that day. Now that I think of it, I haven’t had a No Bras Day in a while…”, she sighed dreamily, sitting up fully. Cross had barely moved from his perch. Tech had busied himself with tending the fire and checking proximity scanners, and Hunter was still in the water, alternating between diving and floating peacefully. “He’s really lost in the sauce, hm?”

Wrecker was pretty sure not even Tech would know what was she talking about.

But still, he noticed something that caught his attention.

“Hey! You have ink!”, he beamed.

“Hm?”, she hummed, and patted the spot Wrecker was staring on. “Oh! Yes, it’s true! I still forget I have it”, Dani laughed to herself.

“What is it? It’s familiar”, he wondered, sitting up to see better the tattoo on her shoulder blade.

“It’s Earth’s profile. The continents and oceans, I mean.”

“Ohhh that’s why!”

“Yeah”, she agreed, voice more subdued now. “I wanted to have something to remind me of home, since I don’t know if I’ll ever be back…”

Wrecker perked up at that, but found nothing to say fast enough.

“I’m going to check on Cross”, she announced, and sprung to her feet.

He noticed the movement and spared her a glance before turning back to the water. Dani risked a small Force-boost to climb up the boulder quicker, managing well enough before hoisting herself on the more or less flat surface.

“Any luck?”, she chirped, eyeing the bucket tucked at a safe distance of the edges.

“Shhh”, he shushed, so she crawled to the bucket to take a good look.

Ducky gasped quietly in amazement.

“Those have the branchia _above_ the head, not on the sides!”, she fangirled.

It made sense, since most of the oxygen dissolved in water is closer to the surface, so those fish must have better oxygen intake and, perhaps, simpler brachia structure and efficiency than fish on Earth.

Crosshair twisted and pulled suddenly, and soon enough there was a fifth fish in the bucket.

“There”, he hummed, satisfied. “That should do it.”

“Woah”, she took a moment to admire their soon-to-be meal. “I went fishing with my parents when I was little. But I didn’t have the patience for it. I always rather jump down and swim with them.”

“I’m a sniper. I _have_ to be patient. Now slid down and take the bucket”, he shooed her with a gesture of his hand.

Dani pouted but obliged, undoing the climb she had just made to receive the bucket Cross dropped from above to jump down after it, landing without trouble.

“Let’s get those cleaned”, he said, and headed for the fire, where Wrecker was already waiting for them, HUGE vibroblade in hand.

“Aw, yeah!”, he cheered when he saw the notable size of the captures. “Today we lunch like kings!”

Crosshair let them to it, going to check Tech’s datapad over his shoulder.

“Anything?”

“No at the moment”, he reported, scrolling through on-live radars. “Most ships entering and leaving atmosphere are using usual lanes, and those who aren’t don’t even stop near us. Nothing approaching us from the ground either: the terrain is quite tricky to navigate, anyways.”

“So we’ll be able to eat outside, after all.”

“Is that contentment I hear in your voice?”

Crosshair smacked his brother’s shoulder playfully. “It _is_ a nice place.”

“Yes”, Tech had to agree, breathing in the clear air and peaceful atmosphere. “Yes, it is.”

“EUGH!”, the cry startled them, and they whirled their heads around fast enough to catch Ducky’s expression of disgust as she leaned away from the gutted fish.

“I thought you were used to cleaning fish!”, Wrecker said, at a loss of her reaction.

“And I am! Doesn’t mean I tolerate the smell very well!”, she grimaced, trying to stifle a laugh.

“…Did you see that?”, Crosshair whispered, nudging Tech.

“I did”, he confirmed, not tearing his eyes away from Dani.

“That was the _same_ face Hunter pulls when he smells raw fish.”

“I noticed.”

“The SAME. FACE.”

“Well. Genetically speaking, she _is_ his daughter. Our—”

“I’m gonna stop you right there.”

“Sure, mate”, Tech deadpanned, tucking away the radars and setting a proximity alarm. “Let’s help them out.”

“Help them out?”, Cross arched an eyebrow. “They have been playing all morning!”

“Okay”, he shrugged, standing up to start walking away. “But if a fish ends up puked on, you’re getting it.”

“Oh hell NO!”

“It almost doesn’t hurt anymore”, Hunter said as they ate, sounding surprised himself.

“That’s good”, Wrecker chirped, sounding relieved.

“And unusual”, Tech piped up.

“Let’s not jinx it”, Crosshair drawled. “Let’s just hope it keeps getting better, hm?”

It wouldn’t have been the first time one of Hunter’s migraines spiked up after a momentary recovery.

For some reason, he didn’t have the feeling it would be one of those occasions.

Blinking out of his thoughts, the Sergeant caught sight of Dani, who seemed to be looking at him but also deep in her mind as she munched on her fish. He waved a hand in her vision field, effectively startling her out of it.

“Oh. Sorry”, she shook her head a bit, swallowing down the bite she had taken. “I was just thinking that you look a bit weird without your bandana. I’m not used to seeing you without it, I guess”, she shrugged, not giving it more importance.

Hunter raised an eyebrow, amused.

“Legend says that it’s red because he soaked a white cloth in the blood of his enemies”, Crosshair tried to explain creepily, but he was obviously too excited with the idea of succeeding to perform well enough to trick her.

“I thought you guys fought droids?”, she snorted, taking another bite of her meal.

“Ohhhhhh she got you!”, Wrecker snickered.

“I’m not that easy to scare!”, she treated herself to gloating, still swaying slightly where she sat to convey that she intended to be playful.

“I guess if you didn’t run away from the first alien you ever met, who had _half a skull_ tattooed on his face…”, Tech turned his head to look pointedly at Hunter.

The Sergeant rolled his eyes, huffing a smile.

“I mean”, Dani bobbed her head sheepishly. “That was very solid option, tho”, she scratched the shortest part of her hair, which was starting to get too long for her taste. “But you’re not scary at all, so”, she shrugged nonchalantly.

“Excuse me?”, Hunter smiled incredulously. “I reckon I am the one teaching you to wield knifes properly—”

“I mean, I know”, she raised a hand to interrupt him. “I mean face-wise. It’s like you tried to get a big, spooky tattoo to look tough, but you failed because the softness is stored in the eyes”, she nodded, very satisfied with her reasoning.

He could do nothing but plop down on the dirt behind him, dead, because that’s how she had left him; and bear his brother’s laughter with as much dignity as he could.

Damn, he was never going to hear the end of it.

By the lake, safe and deep in the warmth of the fleeting happiness, Dani’s smile fell for a second, whishing that moment could last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ducky: what if I latched onto Hunter.....? haha just kidding..... unless.........................????


	13. First Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hmmm a little bit more of bonding and understanding before I head to solidyfing things even more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: this chapter consists of mostly menstruation talk. If that triggers you, I recommend you skip this chapter

“No, loosen up”, Hunter commanded.

Ducky threw him a confused look from where she had taken her fighting stance.

“We’re trying something new. I don’t want you to block my hits, I want you to do whatever it takes to dodge them. Got it?”

She frowned, not sure what had brought that change, but did as he said.

“Alright.”

Suddenly, trying to avoid the attacks felt wrong. It had been her natural reaction at the very beginning of her training, but now, weeks after, it was just… weird. Not that she complained: dancing away from the punches was way easier on her than try to bear the hits. Hunter only managed to get her with the occasional stumble or trip with her own feet.

“When dodging, you need to be aware of your surroundings”, he reminded her, noticing her sloppiness.

And Dani knew, and tried to do better, but her body wouldn’t just move right.

Hunter swept her off her feet, and she didn’t try to get up.

“You okay?”, he leaned down, offering a helping hand with a concerned frown. “You seem… uncoordinated.”

Ducky sat up with his help, shoulders slumped.

“I feel… tired”, she huffed, still not even trying to get up.

“…Maybe we got back to it too soon. We’ll leave it here for today, hm? We’ll try again some other time.”

“Yeah. Thanks”, she took his hand again, a little dizzied when she was finally on her feet, but managed to walk back to the ship alright, wondering what was wrong with her.

Well. At least if she wasn’t training, she could paint the book Tech had gotten her or work in her… projects.

She found out what was wrong with her the next morning.

Wrecker caught her rummaging through the medbay’s drawers.

“Hey”, he called, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Watcha doing?”

“Uhhhh…”, her eyes lowered to the thick gauze package in her hands. “I… need this.”

“Are you hurt?!”, his eyes widened as he jerked back, alarmed.

“No, no!”, Dani was quick to wave her hands in negative. “I just… I just need it. I won’t take too much.”

He didn’t look convinced, but bless his heart, he didn’t push.

“Okay. Are you coming to lift, then?”

Oh. So he thought he could corner her.

“Not today. Nor tomorrow. Nor the day after that. The following probably either…”, Ducky kept saying, slowly shrinking on herself as Wrecker narrowed his eyes more and more.

“So you aren’t hurt. But you need gauze. And you won’t be doing any strenuous activity for a few days.”

“Aha…”, she tried, now just resigned to her fate.

“Just tell me what’s the gauze for”, Wrecker crossed his arms, effectively blocking the exit.

Dani sighed, the tiredness still weighing down on her, her perceived stupidity of the situation multiplying the feeling of despair.

“Because I’m an idiot and I forgot that I menstruate and I didn’t pack pads”, she breathed out.

Wrecker grimaced in confusion.

“WHO THE _KRIFF_ IS DYING?!”, Crosshair screeched from somewhere in the ship. “The ‘fresher is COATED in blood!”

Wrecker’s head whipped back to stare at Dani from where he had leaned back to peek down the hallway.

She flinched, dreading her whole existence.

“No”, she tried to no avail.

In less than a blink he was patting her down and fussing and _occupying her personal space_ , and usually that wouldn’t be an issue, but it was right now.

“Wrecker, no!”, she swatted his hands away angrily, and now it was his turn to flinch and look hurt and confused.

Ducky sighed, already feeling guilty about it but also wanting him out of her space.

“What’s going on? It smells… Something smells _wrong_ in here”, Hunter appeared behind Wrecker.

_Oh, great. He can smell it_ , she sighed, already done with all.

“I’m not dying. Nobody’s dying”, she tried to reassure them, seeing as all of them had arrived and were _crowding her_.

Except Tech. Bless his soul.

“Is it menstruation?”, he asked from a respectful distance.

“Yes”, she craned her neck to be able to look at him over the others’ shoulders and heads.

“Guys, give her space”, he started to tug at his brothers’ arms.

“It smells like… like guts!”, Hunter finally made the connection. “Like open surgery, like—”

“We get it”, Tech patted his arm as he forced him to step back. “What do you need?”, he asked Dani.

“The gauze. And privacy”, she grumbled, despite how grateful she was of how he was handling the situation.

“Got it. Can I explain them, or do you rather do it yourself?”

She narrowed his eyes at him.

“Uhhhhhh what are you going to explain?”, she asked, but palmed the door closed now that he had effectively moved his brothers to the corridor.

“What I’ve read. The uterus. The ovaries. The menstruation cycle”, he seemed to shrug with every thing he listed. “Symptoms. Duration.”

Meanwhile, Ducky molded the gauze and packed a thick layer in her boyshorts, relieved that that was dealt with, but also knowing that if was a temporary solution.

She palmed the door open, leaning on the frame and blinking heavily.

“You look like shit”, Wrecker stressed.

“Let’s sit down”, she grumbled and slithered through them, headed for the galley.

“Do you want anything?”, Tech asked when she settled on her spot.

“No, thanks.”

They settled on their seats, their shoulders tense.

“Okay”, Dani breathed out. “I take you’ve never learned about periods before, then. I’m bleeding, but I’m not hurt. This is part of human reproduction.”

Crosshair, Hunter and Wrecker scowled or grimaced in disbelief, empathy and cluelessness.

“The thing starts with: I have a uterus, and ovaries. The uterus is where potential embryos and foetus develop into babies. The ovaries are the analogue of the testicles, and the eggcells are the analogue of the sperm. Yes?”

“Yes…?”, Crosshair tempted, clearly still not knowing where this was going.

“Right. So, while new sperm is produced every day, eggcells aren’t. You are born with a determined number of eggcells. Usually, there’s one released each month, and when, uh… well, sperm plus eggcell that is in the uterus equals embryo. Yes?”

Hesitant nods.

“Okay, so, in humans, the embryo implants itself to the inner walls of the uterus, which have grown rich in nutrients and blood during the menstruation cycle. But if the cycle passes and there’s no sperm to form an embryo, the uterus goes: no baby? And dumps the inner walls via vagina”, she resumed, taking a moment to gauge his reactions.

“So—“, Hunter tried.

“I am currently getting rid of the inner walls of my uterus, yeah. I am one of the lucky bastards whose menstruation barely hurts, but when it does I literally can’t walk. I just feel tired and I get irritated real quick, so sorry in advance if I yell at you over something stupid.”

“You are _internally bleeding_?”, Crosshair stressed with a grimace.

“It’s a, uh, controlled internal bleeding. No risk of dying”, Dani blinked slowly. “I also made a mess of the sheets”, she remembered. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. We’re used to washing blood”, Tech meant to reassure her.

Ducky narrowed her eyes in thought.

“Okay… that’s a relief, but it also isn’t.”

“That’s fair”, he shrugged, and went to fetch the presumably bloody sheets.

“How often…?”, Hunter started to ask.

“Once a month for a week”, she leaned her head on her hands.

“Do you need anything?”, he asked carefully, sensing her raising irritation.

“…Pads would be ideal. But I can use gauze instead. Other than that… I just want to do nothing. I’ll tell you when I’m feeling better to go back to train”, she shrugged.

“…Anything else?”

“I’d like to go and be alone for a while now”, she said, already standing up.

“Alright.”

They parted to let her pass, watching her go.

“…What even _are_ pads?”, Crosshair finally asked.

“Let’s just set her free in a market and see what she picks”, Wrecker shrugged.

“Don’t come in”, she snarled when Tech knocked on her room’s door and didn’t wait for a reply before stepping in.

He froze, stepping back but leaving the door open.

“Sorry, I just wanted to check on you…”, he raised his hands in surrender, once clenching a sheet. “I also brought you this. It’s clean.”

“Oh”, she deflated with a grimace. “Thanks”, she took it from him carefully, unfolding it to check that, indeed: the notable large blood stain wasn’t there anymore.

“Don’t mention it”, he flashed a testing smile, relaxing when she flashed back one of her own. “You’re doing okay over here?”

“Yeah”, she turned back to her improvised desk in the corner. “Not gonna lie: I’m probably going to deplete the gauze over the course of the next three days.”

“That’s easy to replace. What are you doing?”

“Painting, actually”, she grabbed the colouring book he had bought for her to show him.

The burst of colour very nearly made him flinch. Not that it was unpleasant, on the contrary: she had chosen warm colours for this draw in particular, and the feeling of energy and cosiness carried off. Still, it was a sharp contrast to the general greyness of the _Havoc Marauder_. The magazine posters they had hanging on the walls _did_ have colour in them, but the colours in the mandala felt… meaningless. In a liberating way. No reason beyond the choice of colours beyond that it was what Dani had decided to paint it with.

“Nice”, he managed to say when his eyes adjusted.

She turned the book in her hands, setting it on her lap to look at it.

“…I was thinking I could hang it up the wall when I’m done? If you don’t mind?”

“Why would I mi—“, he started, genuinely at a loss as to why she would ask permission to decorate her room, when he remembered it wasn’t her _permanent_ room.

He was shocked into silence, surprised that the thought had slipped off his mind.

“Oh. Yeah, sure. I mean, make yourself comfortable. It’s no trouble.”

“You sure? You can say no. I’m positive that I won’t yell or cry or anything…”, she narrowed her eyes at the middle distance, vaguely doubting herself.

“Really. I’ll get you something to hang it up”, he said, and hurried to leave the room.

“…Okay.”

“I DID IT!!!”, she hollered, practically launching herself into the cockpit.

“You done menstruating?”, Crosshair asked with a raised eyebrow, not knowing what else that could be about.

“Not yet; but I finally managed to complete the subtitles for one of my movies!”, she cheered, showing them a case sporting four-legged creatures with large muzzles that they had never seen before and letters they didn’t understand.

Huh, so _that_ was how Dani felt when first looking at Aurebesh…

“What does it say?”, Wrecker asked, gesturing at it with his chin.

“ _Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron_ ”, Tech read through his goggles. “I don’t know what any of that means”, he added before anyone could ask.

“It’s a story about the colonization of North America told with horses. Those are horses”, she pointed at Spirit’s picture. “I would, uh, like to watch it, if you don’t mind?”

The implication that she wanted them to watch it with her was there.

Tech had built the CD player out of boredom weeks ago, and it had been sitting under his bunk since then, waiting for Ducky to have the subtitles ready. And, well; making the subtitles was a lot of work, and the whole reason to make them was so _all_ of them could watch it, so…

Crosshair covered his mouth and despair with a hand, realizing that he had nowhere to run because they were in hyperspace.

“I’ll set up the player and projector”, Tech said, effectively sentencing him to watch alien cinema.

“I’ll grab snacks”, Hunter piped up, disappearing down the hallway.

Dani smiled, pleased, and went to help Wrecker move the upper banks to attach them at ground level and be able to lean back on a wall while watching the movie projected on the other.

Wrecker was the first to fall for the horses.

He leaned forwards as soon as he heard the rumbling of their running, and barely leaned back again.

Hunter paid rapt attention to everything concerning Little Creek. Maybe it was the hairstyle, or the way he carried himself, but he seemed to vibe with the character.

Tech was, of course, recording everything; and still he took notes on a datapad.

Crosshair didn’t grumble even once, so as far as Ducky knew he was loving it. He was saved of any teasing because Dani was too busy crying.

“What’s wrong?!”, Hunter startled.

Tech did a double take and hurried to pause the movie.

“N-Nothing”, she sobbed, furiously scrubbing the tears flowing down her face. “Play i-it…”

“But why are you sad?”, Wrecker stressed.

“I’m not!”, she hiccupped, a desperate smile on her face. “It’s just s-so pretty and the soundtrack s-slaps…!”, she gestured at the scene of Rain and Spirit swimming in the pond.

And she wasn’t lying. The thought that the last time she had watched that movie, her mother was still alive, was there, but the new company was good enough that it mitigated the effect.

That she didn’t feel the bottomless loneliness about to swallow her up.

“Okay”, Tech seemed to take charge. “You sure you want it to keep going?”

Dani nodded fervently, settling back to lean against his shoulder.

The others directed uncertain glances at the slicer, but he slid an arm over her shoulders, making sure that she didn’t aggravate her in any way, and played the movie again.

One by one, they settled back again.

Ducky leaned forwards for the jump to freedom; right there with Wrecker.

“ _Oh no_ ”, Little Creek said.

“This is my favourite part!”, she breathed out.

“ _Oh yes_ ”, Spirit’s voice drawled.

Dani squealed in delight.

“This is unreal. I don’t think an animal of this weight and shape could—”, Tech started, but she covered his mouth as they made the jump.

“Just enjoy this, Tech!”

And when Little Creek cheered, she cheered, and Hunter cheered, and Wrecker cheered, and she even bounced on her feet and jumped in absolute delight only to fall back on her seat, not even caring at how the others may be reacting to her moves.

By the end of the movie there was only the awe left by the feeling of freedom that the movie carried.

“…I want a horse”, Wrecker whispered, still mesmerized.

“Bitch, me too”, Ducky scoffed. “They’re all on Earth, tho. And they shit _a lot_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ducky: It's MY period and I get to choose the comfort movie!!!!
> 
> https://discord.gg/Fc2WjTn
> 
> Made a Discord server for the OECMWH series, feel free to join!!!


	14. Tic, Tac... The Clock Doesn't Go Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly but surely, the Havoc Marauder approaches a planet with a decent space port.  
> And it reaches it.

“It’s a retrieval operation. Same old, same old”, Wrecker rolled his eyes.

“But this one, we get to blow up”, Hunter smirked.

“YES!”, the other cheered, pumping a fist up in the air.

“So we’re not going to talk about it, hm?”, Tech hummed, not looking at them.

The other three turned to him.

“About _what_?”, Crosshair asked first.

“We’re getting closer to the Core. After this mission, we still have two assignments: one that actually is a little way back into the Outer Rim, and one that is in Middle Rim space; meaning that there will be ships headed to Coruscant there.”

Uncomfortable, stubborn silence was the only response he got for a long beat.

“At least we’ll get some storage space back”, Crosshair shrugged, bearing Wrecker’s pout turned to glare. “What? That’s the deal, isn’t it? We ship her to Coruscant, and off she goes: to join the Jedi and find her pa or whatever!”, he grumbled.

“Are we _really_ sending her there alone?”, Wrecker almost whines, mouth twisted in worry.

“We can’t exactly go with her. Hunter here would get a brain haemorrhage as soon as we hit atmosphere.”

“And your metabolism would go: _this ambience ain’t familiar_ , and bitch-slap you to the floor and leave you for dead”, the Sergeant teased back before letting out a steadying breath. “But Crosshair’s right. That’s the deal: we can’t keep Dani with us against her will and we _won’t_. Copy?”

Muttered echoes answered him.

“Prep for demo job”, Hunter clapped the tank’s shoulder in passing.

“Lady”, Wrecker greeted.

“Gentle Giant”, she nodded back as they settled to gear up together.

“Has something happened?”, Ducky piped up out of the blue.

“Hm? What? Huh?”

“Has somethi—”

“No! No, why do you ask?”

“You look sad”, she stated bluntly with a concerned tilt of her head and lips.

“I’m not sad!”, he boomed with even more of his usual energy, which made it the more unconvincing combined with his null ability to lie.

Dani grimaced at his forced smile.

He realized that wasn’t working _at all_ and looked away, hurrying to shove his armour on.

“…It’s okay if you don’t want to talk to me about it”, she muttered mournfully, and Wrecker whipped around, terrified that he might had made her cry. “I get that there’s a lot of stuff that I wouldn’t understand the way you guys need it to be understood”, she shrugged.

“It’s not that”, he hurried to say, startling her. “It’s not that”, he repeated softer, settling down at his previous pace. “It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

Ducky looked on for a few moments, trying to decide if she asked the question in her head or if she kept her head down and finished gearing up.

“Would you like a hug?”, she finally offered.

He blinked up at her, eyes darting in the middle distance as he straightened up where he sat.

“…Yeah.”

She rushed to him. Being hugged by Wrecker felt like being wrapped in the best blanket ever. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he folded his around her back, holding her in place as she nuzzled into his neck and he leaned his cheek against her curls. They stood like that for a while, and could have easily stayed like that the whole day, but Dani eventually slackened her grasp, and so he did too.

“Do you want me to play some music?”, she slapped his shoulders with a small smile.

“My Chemical Romance?”, he grinned, excited.

“I was thinking of something else? I can play that if you want, tho.”

“Surprise me”, he shrugged.

Sunflower by Post Malone and Swae Lee played as they finished their preparations.

“—nd to prep the charge, you have to push this button, and then this, here you set the timer, and BOOM!”

Dani jerked and squeaked, startled.

“HA HA!”, Wrecker laughed loudly, patting her back with too much force.

“You piece of shi—”

He pushed her down, making her duck away from a stray blaster bolt.

“I thought you were covering us?!”, he called over his shoulder towards the open door of the servers’ room where they were planting the charges.

“We ARE!”, Hunter grumbled from the other side of the door, where the other three Batchers were shooting down wave after wave of droids while Wrecker gave his impromptu explosives class.

The giant turned back to the matter at hand without another word.

“Anyways, this is set. Only thing left to do is to stick it to a surface”, he finished, and stood up from his crouch to slam the explosive against a metal column.

“Isn’t it… dangerous, to handle it like that?”, Dani grimaced.

“Nah, it’s fine!”, he dismissed, and shoved an unarmed explosive in her hands. “Your turn now!”

“Wha?”, she blurted out, fumbling with the package and stuttering in horror when Wrecker started to leave for the door. “Wait wait wait wait! At least watch me while I do it!!!”

“You’ll be fiiiiiiiiiiiiine”, he encouraged her.

“No no no no no! What if I set it off?!”

“You won’t, let’s go over the steps together again, yeah?”, he kept coaching as he started blasting droids with his brothers. “First you…?”

“Turn on the charge”, she gulped. “With the… white key?”

“Yeah!”

Ducky bit her lip as she pushed the button.

“Okay. Okay”, she mumbled to herself, trying to calm her shaking hands.

“And now?”, Wrecker nudged her.

“Now I set the timer”, she mumbled. “And I DON’T push the red button.”

“Good!”, he cheered.

She worked in silence for a while, steadily incrementing the time to an hour.

More than enough to get out safely.

She hoped so.

“And now I stick it to a surface!”, she tried to say with as much confidence as she could muster, and slapped it against a pillar.

“Woo!”, Wrecker cheered.

“Yes, yes, very well! Now hurry up and do the same with the rest!”, Crosshair grumbled.

“Y’all, this would go faster if I had some help!”, she sassed back, but set to work as quickly as she could.

“It would also go slower if you were being shot at!”, Tech shot back.

“I’m just saying that _I_ could be shooting at the droids, not arming bombs for the first time in my life!”

“Alright, that’s enough bickering for now! When we get back to the _Marauder_ we’re teaching you to make explosives with things that you can find in a kitchen, so start psyching yourself up for it!”, Hunter cut the chatter.

Dani huffed in disbelief and annoyance and slapped another live charge in place. Still, she won confidence and speed with every successful step.

“Daniiiiiiii…!”, Hunter called urgently through clenched teeth.

“Two to go!”, she called back without turning, willing her fingers to move faster. “One to go!”, she reported through her own clenched jaw.

The sounds of blaster fire were growing closer, and they had already been near to begin with.

“Done!”, Ducky exclaimed in relief, and barely had time to sigh out her nervousness before she was swept on her feet and tugged along towards the room’s backdoor; Wrecker and Hunter still laying cover fire as Tech guided them and Crosshair pulled at her.

He tugged her harder, pulling her in front of him before letting go and sliding a hand inside one of his pouches. Dani heard the sound of something metallic steaking onto something and turned to watch him throw some sorts of discs to the walls.

“What’s—”

“Just keep running!”, he cut her.

Thinking that he was planting _more_ explosives, she rushed to get ahead, but Tech stopped her with a quick tap to the arm.

“You might want to see this”, he said, amusement in his voice as he turned his head around while still navigating towards the exit.

She turned too to see Hunter and Wrecker running past Crosshair, who had stopped and was taking a fire position leaning his rifle on the long red ridge attached to his shoulder bell.

“Oh! _That’s_ what it is fo—!”

The single shot was fired against one of the small discs, and it ricocheted, and ricocheted, and ricocheted, and ricocheted; the bolt flying straight to the other discs through the droid’s bodies as if they were magnetized to them.

It took a long moment to register that the discs were _mirrors_.

“Nooo…!”, Wrecker wailed mournfully.

This time it was Hunter who yanked her out of her stupefaction and into movement.

“Dude?!”, she finally blurted out to Crosshair, who had caught up with her. “That was! AWESOME?!”

The earnest, unconcerned admiration made him blush under the helmet and choke on his sassy remark.

“What did you think the ridge was for?”, he managed to snark.

“I dunno. Fashion? To slap your friends with at passing? To take out eyes gratuitously because if nobody else can see then you’re the one with the best sight?”, her voice pitched, unable to hold back laughter.

He slapped her arm, the hit weakened by the weight of her praise still on him.

“Suck it, Wrecker!”, he added in an afterthought, turning to his brother.

“The day ain’t over yet!”, the other argued.

They sped off the building, heading for the meadows and the lonely hills around the station, where they had hidden some land transport that Crosshair had ‘acquired’ for them.

The sniper settled himself behind the controls while the took turns to climb up and shoot cover fire for the remaining droids tailing them.

“And now—”, Wrecker lifted himself next to Dani and slung an arm around her shoulders, facing her towards the building they had just left. “—comes the best part!”

He opened his other hand in front of her, revealing a detonator.

“Push the button to set all timers to zero!”, he clapped her back.

Dani managed to brace herself enough and just stumble half a step.

She carefully took the detonator from him, turning it around to study it from all angles.

“Push the button!”, Hunter urged, and the sound of blaster fire surged back into her ears, her focus not blocking it out anymore.

“ _Now_?”, she leaned back in confusion. Weren’t they too close to—

“Yes, NOW!”

Her finger twitched instantly at the confirmation of the order, and the charges went off.

The deafening noise and flash of light from the explosion scared her, so Wrecker wrapped his arms tighter around her and swung her around so he would be between her and the burning building as they sped away from it.

“You okay?”, he whispered near her ear.

“Y-Yeah”, she replied despite the tremors in her arms and legs.

“That was a good first explosion!”, he cheered her, carefully letting go of her. “Did you like it?”

“No”, she grumbled, “Too loud, too… too… visible!”

“Aw, look at the little stealth operations soldier…”, Cross cooed mockingly.

She slapped his arm like he had done before to her.

And before any of them had realised it, the mission was over and they were in space again, with two destinations and a decision to make.

“…I mean, we can start with the one further away, right? We’ll _eventually_ get there”, Wrecker argued weakly, unconvinced himself.

“Dragging this on won’t do _anybody_ any good”, Crosshair spat. “You guys are too attached. Let’s just get this over with.”

He finished the roll of his eyes to find his brothers looking at him with deadpan faces.

“What?”, he shrugged defensively.

Hunter sighed, deciding to unpack that at a later date, and turned to try and gauge Tech’s and Wrecker’s emotions.

The demolition man was already pouting, arms crossed, openly displeased with the situation.

Tech was mostly composed, the only thing giving away how he felt being the slight slump of his shoulders as he leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees as he fidgeted with his interlaced fingers.

“It’s just”, he shrugged when he noticed Hunter’s gaze on him. “We know what we have to do. But I had… gotten used to have her around. That’s all”, he shrugged again, looking away. “It was fun teaching her things.”

“Shit, Tech; don’t talk as if she were dead”, Crosshair scoffed.

“But what if Ventress finds her again?!”, Wrecker jumped, looking as if he just had the best idea ever. “And alone?! We can’t let that happen r—”

“Wreck”, Hunter cut him; low, dry. “Don’t.”

“It’s her decision. We agreed to take her”, he reminded to them and to himself, and turned to the projected holomap, about to make the call.

“Let’s ask her!”, the tank tried. “Let’s tell them the options and let her choose? We don’t mind which one we take first, right?”

The other three blinked and exchanged glances.

“Okay”, the Sergeant shrugged, doing his best to hide the relief at the decision being lifted off his shoulders.

The word had barely left his mouth when Wrecker was already shouldering his way into the corridor and calling for Ducky. She returned with her in tow not a minute later: she was dressed in her pyjama shorts and shirt and was blinking slowly. A quick glance to a chrono confirmed that it was nearly bedtime.

“What’s up?”, she asked, glancing between them.

Hunter took a step aside so she could see the map.

“We have two assignments, currently”, he gestured to it. “One sets us back further into the Outer Rim; the other is in the Middle Rim, where there will be ships to Coruscant.”

“Oh”, she blurted out, freezing on the spot and falling silent. “I, uh, I thought it would take longer to get there…”

“It’s _been_ a few months”, Tech shrugged.

He wasn’t wrong.

“We don’t have any special priority”, Hunter went on. “That’s why we thought to ask you.”

She was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed, and touched, and guilty and ashamed of herself because she was going to behave like a child, she knew.

“Oh, I don’t mind”, she blurted out. “I mean, your job is more important!”, she decided that that was a solid enough excuse, but her brain still scrambled for more. “And that way I get more time to work on the, uh, Force-lifting things”, she shrugged sheepishly.

Truth was: she still hadn’t mastered any of the Force powers on Tech’s ‘Basic List’. Things still exploded when she levitated them. They still weren’t sure that the Jedi Order would take her in if she didn’t know how to do things they considered basic.

“If you’re sure” the Sergeant said carefully.

“Yeah!”, she chirped with a quick smile.

“Alright, then. We know where we’re going.”

And so, they all pretended they weren’t postposing the inevitable on their way there.

The planet was a hot, dusty one, with a market hosted in a wide canyon.

The Bad Batch was meant to retrieve a stolen data chip with critical Republic information that was supposedly going to be sold there.

“See if you can find some pads”, Hunter told her. “We’ll be around doing recon. No armours, no army talk, got it?”

“Got it”, she chirped.

“Check-in texts every 10 minutes.”

“Ten?!”

“Yes, ten: because I need as many eyes with me as possible. Rendezvous when you’re done.”

“Yes, tito Hunter”, she rolled her eyes with no bite, and walked off.

She felt more confident now: with the switchblade in her pocket, which she _knew_ how to use, as well as her fists and bodyweight. Their training was really paying off. Dani walked up and down the market, trying to spot something resembling an hygiene products stand; but not only were most posts only sending ship parts, but everything was dusty.

After a lot of searching and procrastinating, she had to use the last resort: asking around.

Ducky psyched herself up and walked towards the least-threatening shopkeeper in her current field of vision.

“Excuse me?”, she called the Ugnaught’s attention.

“Come to trade?”, they asked with a quirked brow.

“Actually, I was looking for hygiene products”, she said sheepishly.

“What kind of products?”, they wondered, tilting their head.

“Uh…”, she cringed, really not feeling like explaining menstruation again. “To take care of cyclical bleeding…?”

“Oh, poor soul!”, they exclaimed, leaning back in shock. “It must be quite a dire injury!”

“…I guess”, she shrugged.

“I ought to know! My da got crippled bad working in a factory. Never healed quite well…”, they lamented.

“Oh. I’m sorry about that”, Ducky said sincerely.

“Thank you for your grief. Anyways! I got supplies for him at Utes’ shop; medic fella, seven shops over in that direction, hole-in-the-wall kind of thing”, they pointed with their thumb.

“Ah, thank you, I’ll check it out. Have a good day!”, she bid farewell.

“A good day to you too!”, they waved back.

With that positive interaction giving her a boost of confidence, she followed their instructions, finding the shop behind the combined pile of scrap from two other shops.

“Hello?”, she called to the apparently empty room, staying as close to the door as possible.

She made a tentative Force-sweep. The hundreds of bustling dots outside made her grimace a little, but she was able to confirm that there was someone inside.

“Helloooo?”, she repeated, louder.

An Aleena walked into sight, squinting at her.

“You hurt?”, she asked.

“Uh, no; I’m looking for something to take care of period bleeding, I’ve been told I might find something here?”

Ducky walked out of there soon after with a couple washable menstruation pads. She had never used a reusable pad before, but she would get used to it. Happily walking down the market, she didn’t have trouble to spot Wrecker among the crowd.

“Hey mate!”, she greeted him, startling him from where he had been rummaging through a variety of old ammo.

“Don’t scare me like that!”, he breathed out.

“Sorry”, she grinned. “Did you guys find the thing?”

“Hm. We were waiting for you. Come”, he said, and strode off.

Dani perked up at that in curiosity, and hurried after him.

He guided her to where the others were, half-hiding between a bar and a rock wall, drinks in hands.

Tech passed her a soda.

“Oh! Thanks!”, she chirped, cracking it open.

“Good, she has accepted the price. Now you must do what we ask”, Crosshair blurted out as soon as she had taken the first gulp.

Ducky choked with the gas.

Hunter elbowed him.

“We have found the chip”, Tech started.

She composed herself, looking them up and down and confirming that nobody seemed to be in possession of it.

“But…?”, she prompted, arching a suspicious eyebrow.

“But for what my tracking device says, it’s in the back of a shop right in the middle of the market. No way to get there geared up without them seeing us coming”, the slicer explained.

“You’ve been practicing your cloaking, right?”, Hunter asked, despite already knowing the answer.

“Been hiding you from each other trying to have the non-cloaked not realize it daily and the last time you caught me was almost two weeks ago”, she nodded and crossed her arms, puffing her chest in pride.

“How long can you keep it up?”, he rubbed his stubble, eyes narrowing in thought.

“One person 15 minutes, two persons nearly 10, three a little above 5… I could hide the five of us for a minute, maybe…?”

“Tech?”, the Sergeant consulted, turning to him.

“I mean: it should be easy to find with the tracker”, he gestured to the small device attached around his wrist, very much like a watch. “But I do need more than a minute.”

“Can you do it? You two?”

Dani startled at the idea of not going all of them together. She turned to Tech, who was regarding her with a questioning tilt of his head.

“I. Uhm. Yes. We’re going now?”

“The sooner the better”, Crosshair said, discarding his toothpick.

“You sure about this?”, Wrecker nudged her softly, picking up on her hesitation.

“Yes, yes. It’s just very sudden, but it’s fine”, she scratched the back of her head absentmindedly. “You lead”, she told Tech.

The others moved to form a barrier between them and the market crowd, and then Dani cloaked them both. They parted to let them pass when Tech patted Crosshair’s and Wrecker’s arms, and then they were off.

They didn’t talk: just weaved their way through the crowd. Ducky had a hand on the man’s shoulder to ensure that they wouldn’t drift apart. It wasn’t long before he slowed down in front of a shop that looked like all the others. Dani frowned at the normality of it, but Tech tapped her arm and showed her his device, where it was clear that what they were looking for was beyond the front stand and the three Dowutins walking around.

Wow. They could surely give Wrecker a run for his money.

He nudged her again, taking half a step forward with a questioning look. She gave him a thumbs up and rested her hand on his shoulder again, following him as they slithered among the… guards? Shopkeepers? Thieves? And into the curtained off storage room.

It was very dark there. Tech’s goggles emitted a soft red light and Ducky slapped his arm with a low, sharp hiss. He raised his free hand to cover it and turned a bit to give her a sheepish smile and a shrug before walking deeper into the room. She repressed a huff and followed him, mindful of the dusty floor and the shelves packed with metal pieces. She had to rush forward to bodily stop Tech from running into a Dowutin roaming among the shelves. They backtracked a bit and took another route.

Tech gave her a light tap on the chest as a warning before stopping and pointing at a box with the hand that wasn’t covering the red glow, and started to rummage in at as much as he was able too. Dani made another sweep with her Force-sight and dove to help him. He grasped her wrist tightly when she had been about to discard a rusted-looking slim square of metal, and she frowned at it, bobbing it slightly in an: _are you sure?_ gesture. Tech replied with a curt nod, so she shrugged it off and pocketed it. He made to lead again, but she grabbed his shoulder and yanked him back.

The Dowutin strode right through where he would have been.

He turned slowly and gave her a soft shove, a clear: _you lead, please_.

Ducky supressed a snort and turned tail, letting Tech settle a hand on her shoulder as she had sone before.

They had to plaster themselves to a wall when the person inside the shop gave a shout of alarm and two others rushed in, walking right by them.

They hurried outside, scurried off the last guard and headed with quick steps towards the crevice the others were hiding in. She didn’t uncloak them until they had slipped past the others Batchers, whose Hunter had tugged aside to let them pass when he had sensed them coming.

“So?”, the Sergeant asked when they appeared.

Ducky slipped the chip out of the pocket of her pants.

“Attagirl!”, he smiled, taking the chip and storing it in one of his pouches. “Were you spotted?”

She blushed at the praise.

“No, but I think they know the chip is gone”, Tech replied.

“Let’s book it out of here, then”, Crosshair straightened from where he had been leaning against the wall.

“Don’t rush. Don’t be suspicious. As far as everybody knows; we have done nothing wrong, so there’s no reason why we should be in a hurry to leave. Understood?”

“Yes!”

“Yeah…”

“Makes sense.”

“Roger, roger.”

They still waited a while, letting Dani rest and gauging if the situation might escalate, but as far as some distant shouts and people giving the Dowutins a wider berth than usual, nothing happened. Hunter lazily peeled off of their hiding spot and they followed him in the same manner, eyes still gliding over products and prizes.

They were arriving at the limit of the market, the _Havoc Marauder_ already in sight when something caught Ducky’s ear.

She halted on her tracks and whirled around, looking for the source of the music.

“Dani?”, Hunter called, having heard her steps falter.

But she was already walking off, headed for what seemed to be a precious stones post.

Crosshair and Wrecker broke off to follow her, signalling to the other two to proceed to the ship.

“Greetings, youngling”, the owner of the stand said when she approached. “Interested in shiny rocks?”

“Always”, she muttered, hearing straining to identify where the song was coming from. “Do you…? Do you have music playing?”

“…I do not”, they blinked as the two men caught up with her. “Gentlemen.”

“What are you doing?”, Crosshair hissed. “We’re leaving.”

Dani paid him no mind, instead slowly raising a hand to sink it among the rounded gems and stones, gently looking for something.

“If you’re looking for something in particular—”

“What’s this?”, she asked in awe, a cobalt blue crystal held between her thumb and index. “It _sings_.”

It was snatched off her hand so suddenly that she jolted back.

Behind her, Wrecker stood taller.

“I, uh”, the shopkeeper stuttered. “I would appreciate that you don’t touch the product like that.”

“So?”, Crosshair crossed his arms. “What is it?”

“…Just some crystal.”

“It’ll be cheap, then.”

“I don’t think you can afford it.”

“So it’s not just ‘some crystal’, huh?”

The owner was tensing more and more, looking between the commandos with increasing nervousness.

“Cross”, Ducky piped up. “…It’s okay. It’s—It’s amazing, but it’s just a rock. You’re right. Let’s go.”

She turned and started to leave for the _Marauder_ , feet dragging ever so slightly on the ground. Wrecker exchanged a glance with his brother and shrugged, going to follow her.

Crosshair followed shortly after.

And this was it. Her last journey with them.

She was trying hard to ignore that fact. Trying hard to find reasons not to pack her things yet. Dani kept up with her training and the conversations during meal time that flowed with the naturality of friends; yet stayed awake at night, unable to sleep with the anxiety fuelling her heartbeat.

“Hey”, Crosshair called her out of the blue, very much like a fox trying to sell drugs to kids.

“Hm?”, she raised an eyebrow at him as he approached her without making eye contact.

His arm turned and her attention fell on his closed fist. He wiggled it a bit, impatient, so she reached to cup it.

His fingers eased, and a cobalt blue crystal sang in her hand.

Dani gasped, free hand flying to cover her gapping mouth.

“It’s the one, right?”, he asked with a tinge of nervousness when she stayed frozen for an awkward amount of time.

“It is”, she managed to mutter, and then her eyebrows lowered from her hairline to a frown. “Cross”, she said, more gravely than he had expected her ‘happy voice’ to be.

“Hm?”

“Did you steal this?”

“Yes”, he replied casually.

“Cross!”

“What? You wanted it, didn’t you?”

“But you didn’t—You didn’t _have_ to stole it for me!”, she tried to argue, but her voice cracked at how moved she felt.

“I didn’t”, he shrugged. “But I wanted to.”

And he turned around to hide his smile, knowing that she had loved his present as he left.

“Would you like to throw a Farewell Party?”

Hunter’s question sounded alien even to her, but it was _so damn obvious_ to him that she was panicking about leaving…

“Nothing too fancy, mostly an excuse so you can dance again”, he added, squirming a bit at her shocked silence.

“Ah. Uh… Okay: but I don’t dance alone. If you want me to dance somebody else as to too”, she grinned.

Their faces were priceless.

The ‘party’ really was an excuse to dance accompanied by the _adobo_ Dani had cooked, but it was just perfect: the Bad Batchers _did_ have moves, if not a bit awkward and goofy, but that made it all the more fun. Watching her from up close was much easier to see that she often miss-stepped or lost the beat or plainly lost her balance and tumbled until she could brace herself against a wall and pull herself up. It was fun teaching each other moves until they were too tired to stand and they ended up on the galley’s table talking and laughing.

“—nd that’s why I’m called Wrecker!”

“Maaaaaaaan!”, she laughed nervously, imagining the mayhem.

“You would never guess what ‘Tech’ is short for”, Crosshair blurted out, already bracing himself to keep his brother safely at arm’s distance.

“No, don’t tell he—“, the other flailed, his slightly shorter arms not managing to reach and cover the sniper’s mouth.

“Technology? Technician?”, Ducky shrugged with an amused smile.

“ _Technically_ ”, Crosshair said slowly, rejoicing at every syllable while Tech seemed to want to die right there.

A sharp intake of air was followed by her shrieks of pure delight that only evolved into breathless laughter when she ran out of air.

“That’s _THE BEST SHIT EVER!!!_ ”, she laughed.

Tech just tried to hide his embarrassed blush in his arms.

And with that, it seemed like she was calmer, and their last night together would be a good memory.

“This is it”, Tech said awkwardly, the space port right in front of them.

Ducky had a death grip on her backpack’s straps.

Hunter feared her heart might explode.

“You’ll be okay”, he tried to comfort her, softly grasping her shoulder. “We checked the ship’s background. They’re legit, going straight for Coruscant.”

Still, Dani didn’t move past trying to manage her shaky breaths.

“The Jedi Temple should be easy to find”, Wrecker gave it a try too, even if he was almost mumbling, doing his best to hide his own low spirits.

“And with the money we gave you you’ll have enough to pay the ride to the planet, plus a cab to where you need to go.”

“…What if they don’t take me in”, she finally muttered, voice shaking. “I can’t lift things. I don’t have visions. I can’t read minds. I don’t even have a lightsaber.”

Her whole body was shaking now.

“I’ll be alone there”, she whined, and the dam broke; shoulders jumping with her sobs.

Hunter took a firmer hold of her shoulders and turned her around, bracing himself to face her sorrow.

“Or you won’t. Or they’ll welcome you with open arms, because nevermind what you can or can’t do: you’re an amazing person and Jedi prime material.”

He had intended to make her smile, but instead she sobbed harder.

“And it’s your best bet to find your dad”, Tech reminded her gently.

Months ago, that blind hope would have spurred her into movement.

Not now.

Not when she had something more solid, more stable, in her reach.

Ducky shook her head and turned to Crosshair.

“I think-k you’re right”, she sobbed. “Tatay’s probably d-dead…”, she choked on the word.

The other three whipped their heads at neck-breaking speed to glare at him.

To everyone’s surprise, Dani growled and pushed Hunter, the only in her reach.

“Don’t do that!”, she growled, teeth bared and tears flowing. “He’s r-right…!”

“We don’t know that—“, Tech tried.

“ _I_ don’t know that either”, she hiccupped. “And I don’t—I don’t want to run around alone just to find out that there’s—that there’s no one—“, she whimpered, unable to go on. “Please don’t make me leave”, she finally pleaded, voice a heartbroken whisper. “I want to stay with you. Please let me stay…!”

Wrecker couldn’t take it anymore and kneeled down to pull her into a hug, shielding her from the world as much as he was able to.

They all looked at Hunter, and Hunter looked at them.

 _Collective decision_ , he signed.

 _Hold position_ , Tech signed.

 _Hold position_ , Wrecker articulated too, careful of not disturbing the sobbing teen in his arms.

They turned to Crosshair.

 _Hold position_ , he mimicked them.

The unanimity was a relief to them all.

“Let’s go settle you in again, Lady”, Wrecker said softly, and started to carry her off back to the _Marauder_.

She just clung harder to him.

“You think we can…?”, Tech tempted, watching them go.

“I’ll call the Commander”, Hunter sighed, and nudged his brothers towards their home.


	15. Commander Cody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dani meets the person who brought the Bad Batch together

“I’m very nervous.”

“We know”, they choired.

“What if he doesn’t like me?”

“He’ll love you”, Crosshair rolled his eyes.

“This isn’t about him loving me; it’s about him deciding if I’m good enough to be a commando!”, Dani despaired, halting her pacing around the cockpit to drop herself on Wrecker’s cot and hooking her trembling hands under her armpits.

“ _We_ ’ve been training you, you’ll be _fine_ ”, even Hunter was starting to lose his chill.

“What even is the plan? Do we tell him I’m probably Force-sensitive? Do we not? Tech, check out my salute again. Are you sure I’m doing it right?”

“You’re gonna pull a muscle if you stand any tighter”, he confirmed. “It’s so impeccable he’s going to be uncomfortable. _Relax_.”

“’Relax’, you say!”, she scoffed, letting herself fall on her side on the bunk. “I thought Hunter was the boss here! And now I’m going to meet the boss’ boss, whom I know nothing except that he is hot shit!”

“Marshal Commander Cody”, Hunter said slowly with a grin. “He’s a good man.”

Ducky waited a bit more, but nothing else was added.

“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got on him?”, she righted herself, hating that she was so altered.

“He helped us all”, Crosshair added out of the blue, and a kind of reverent silence filled the cockpit, making Dani duck her head and stay silent. “Just talk to him like you talk to us”, he added, his voice a tad lighter.

“Uhhhh maybe with a little more respect than that”, Tech punctuated.

“I _still_ don’t know what’s expected of me”, she stressed as politely as she was able.

“He’ll want to see what you can do”, Hunter shrugged. “This is going to be mostly symbolic, really”, he turned from the controls to shoot Ducky a reassuring smile. “You already have a place here.”

His words shocked her heartbeat to an almost normal rate.

Her limbs still shook.

“Yeah, let’s blow off some steam!”, Wrecker got up from his seat and nudged her towards the gym. “You’ll feel better after some exercise, and you’ll be able to show off in front of the Commander!”

Despite exercising until almost dropping, Dani was unable to sleep that night.

“Force”, Crosshair grimaced upon visual contact. “Somebody didn’t have a good night.”

“I’m just glad it’s morning already”, she muttered, accepting the mug of milk Tech handed her and whisking one of Crosshair’s pastries to herself.

“Hey!”, the sniper complained, and she made eye contact as she dipped it in the milk, sealing it as hers.

“Really: nothing’s bad is going to happen”, Hunter reassured her yet again, sitting across from her. “Cody’s a—”

“Good man. I know”, she sighed, looking away; and the length of the sigh gave away a deeper worry. “I’ve just been thinking”, she shrugged, still debating if she should tell them or not.

She would. Of course she would. They knew that.

“…The Commander will look a lot more like my dad, won’t he?”

_Crap_.

They exchanged panicked glances to confirm that, yeah: they had all forgotten about that.

“Can I just blink out of existence if I get overwhelmed?”, she asked in a murmur, not meeting their eyes.

“…Ideally, no”, Tech said slowly.

“It does come off as rude”, Crosshair nodded to himself.

Ducky dropped the pastry into the milk, staring numbly at it, lips pressed in a thin line.

“But you can’t leave for a stroll if you need it”, Hunter proposed instead. “If you can’t take it just say it. We’ll cover you.”

Dani glanced up, still seeming uncomfortable with the situation, but she resumed her breakfast.

Wrecker gripped her shoulders in reassurance from behind her as the others walked out of the ship.

“I feel like I’m going to die”, she breathed out, having to deal with tachycardia again.

“That’s just the anxiety. The Commander doesn’t even have to like you, but I think he will”, his rumbling voice sounded so sure of himself.

She turned around to face him.

“How do I look?”

“Better than earlier”, he snickered, and Dani punched his chest playfully, at which he replied with his lightest shove, which still spurred her into movement and to the outside.

A river of fast waters roared nearby, the air clean and fresh all around. Insects buzzed around, coming and going from the patches of vegetation or crawling among the grass and sparse rocks.

It helped her calm down a bit.

Further away, the others were already greeting the person who had just descended from the shuttle.

Up in the sky, a humongous triangular ship hung still, and despite the lack of movement, its presence was still unsettling.

Wrecker nudged her again.

“I’m going, I’m going!”, she huffed with an amused smile, deciding to just put an end to this and walk straight for the party.

The first thing she got a glimpse of was the white and orange armour. It stroke as out of place, after being around the Bad Batch’s dark armour, and as a very stupid design.

White armour made for disastrous camouflage, unless in snow; and it didn’t strike as designed for cold weather either.

The Commander turned form Hunter to her, but she was still too busy checking out his armour to look at his face. She was amused at what at first glance appeared to be a chicken footprint drawn on his chest plate, but did not comment on it.

They had asked her to be respectful, after all.

Next thing that captured her attention was the antenna attached to his shoulder. The strangeness of it made her amusement grow, morphing her barely-there smile to a very visible thing.

To try and avoid an involuntary snort, Dani finally looked up at his face.

“SHIT man! What happened to your face?!”

And there went the respect owed to a commanding officer.

On her defence: there was a limit to her self-control and it had been quickly eroded by the chicken print-antenna combo.

She immediately cringed at her own words. She suddenly expected them to facepalm or something, but the others stayed strangely still, and that scared her even more. She was about to be scolded, she guessed, which was precisely what she had been fearing all along.

_Or maybe even aggressed_ , a warier part of her piped up.

She really hoped not, because no matter how much respect the others had for him, if he raised a hand at her she would club him to dea—

“What do you think happened?”, the Commander asked instead, a shit-eating grin growing on his familiar features. For a long moment, Dani just blinked at him, thrown off of her thoughts and rhythm. “Come on, give me your best bet!”, he encouraged with a grin, crossing his arms over his chest.

Ducky narrowed her eyes and hummed in thought, accepting the challenge and staring at the huge scar intently.

“Your head was obviously smashed against something”, she noted. “Something slightly circular.”

“Mhm.”

“I don’t know, were you glassed in a bar fight?”, she shrugged.

“Do I look like the kind to get into bar fights?”, the Commander arched an eyebrow.

“Maybe you were _before_ you got glassed”, she grinned.

“Oh, I would have loved to see that!”, Hunter grinned, at which the other replied with a half-hearted shove.

“Nice try, kid. Not even close; but nice try”, he smiled at her, irradiating a powerful kind of sass. “I’m Marshall Commander Cody”, he introduced himself, and held out a hand.

“Dani Luna”, she offered on her part, and stroke a quick, lax salute before swiftly grabbing the hand offered.

“Hm”, Cody hummed, with what she was pretty sure was approval in his tone.

She blinked at him.

It was curious. That was her father’s face, but Cody was so obviously _not him_. It wasn’t just the scar: it was the shine of his eyes, the inclination of his lips, the way he held himself, the tilt of his voice, the sense of humour…

She was pretty sure that as long as she was engaged, she wouldn’t be drawn to memories.

Cody heavily placed a hand on Hunter’s shoulder.

“How about we find a place to sit so we can talk a bit?”, he suggested.

“Okay”, Dani chirped, and turned towards the _Havoc Marauder_ , parked in a much plainer place than Cody’s ship.

Wrecker followed her, patting her back with a supportive smile, and Tech trotted to join them, while Crosshair walked lazily after them.

The Commander didn’t follow yet, and so Hunter waited for him to speak.

“She gets along with the boys?”

“Yeah. Took a bit of work, but she was nothing but polite and kind when we picked her up. From then on it was pretty easy to bond with her during spare time”, the Sergeant explained calmly. “She was pretty nervous about meeting you, by the way. Had a rough night. Try not to butcher her too much”, he nudged his shoulder.

“Does she know we’re clones?”, Cody raised an eyebrow.

“She didn’t at the beginning. The subject came up eventually and it was a shock, but she has no trouble with that. We’re people and friends to her.”

“That’s good to know, brother”, the Commander smiled at him sincerely. “Is there some subject I shouldn’t ask her about?”

“Her father’s presumed dead”, Hunter sighed, crossing his arms. “And she doesn’t talk about her mother; so she’s either dead, or absent, or wasn’t someone she wants to remember.”

Cody’s smile fell.

“Poor girl.”

“Yeah.”

“At least she has you now.”

“Cody, she’s not my _ad_ ”, Hunter rolled his eyes.

“You did tell me you’re teaching her knife-wielding.”

“That doesn’t mea—”

“If that isn’t how Mandos bond with their kids, I don’t know what it is”, he shook his head theatrically and followed after the group.

Hunter let out an annoyed growl.

They arranged a small camp together, pushing downed logs and mostly flat rocks so they could sit near each other.

Wrecker showed off lifting the heaviest items while Dani fawned over him.

“You can lift that one too”, he pointed at a smaller but not depreciable rock.

“No, I can’t”, she muttered with resignation.

“Not with that attitude!”, he boomed and lifted it over his head, heading for the girl.

“Wrecker, no”, she took a cautious step back. “I don’t fancy breaking bones today!”

“You’ll be fiiiiiiiiiine”, he went to let go of it right on top of her, so she shot her hands up in at least an attempt to deviate the stone.

The weight was slowly transferred to her, but she gritted her teeth nonetheless.

“Wreck—“, her voice strained.

“You’re doing great! You almost got it!”, he cheered from behind her.

Dani huffed and sputtered under the weight, but her arms didn’t give out. She risked a glance up, taking in the size of the rock she was holding in the air.

“See? All that lifting is paying off!”, Wrecker nodded proudly.

She panted and incredulous smile and shifted to let the stone drop in front of her. She turned to Wrecker, who was already holding a hand up, and so she high-fived him with a shy smile and went off to gather cooking tools.

Cody walked up to him.

“You were helping her from behind”, he noted.

“Only a little”, the tank shrugged. “Just three fingers, really! She could have totally pulled it off on her own. Just needs a little push”, he rested his fists on his hips, watching Dani take the tools from Crosshair with an air of calm satisfaction.

The Commander then moved to sit beside Hunter, soaking in the responsibility-free moment.

“Enjoying the break, Commander?”, the Sergeant asked with a grin.

“You can’t even begin to imagine”, he sighed, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing his temples. “Good thing you were nearby. To the campaigns now we have added the hunt for the Force-baby. The only positive thing we have is that the Separatists haven’t appear to have found them yet either.”

“How do you track a Force-sensitive baby?”, Hunter asked with a raised brow, but Tech turned to them too, interested in the conversation.

“I don’t really know: General Kenobi just kind of meditates and tries to find them in the Force. All High Generals are at it: sometimes they sense nothing, sometimes they say they felt a burst; but whenever we get to the location there’s no one and no activity there. A few Separatists and most, and that’s it.”

“Babies can have the Force?”, Dani asked, settling the items down.

“Uh, yes? All Jedis have had the Force all their lives, so they ought to”, Cody replied, brow furrowed at the strangeness of the question.

“The Commander here works under a Jedi General”, Hunter supplied, to add to Cody’s confusion.

“Oh…! Sorry, where I come from nobody can use the Force. What are you gonna do with the baby, anyways?”

“Take them to the Jedi Temple for safekeeping, and teaching them to use their powers for good”, he replied curtly.

Ducky blinked for a second, thinking.

“Will they be well taken care of?”

“Of course”, Cody replied, perplexed. “That’s the whole point of getting to them before the Sith.”

“I don’t know much about that conflict, either”, she shrugged, and the Marshall Commander had his pro-Jedi speech ready, but Dani beat him to it. “Not that I had a good experience with the Sith, anyways.”

“You encountered a Sith?!”

“Ventress”, Crosshair supplied. “She caught us as we finished a job.”

“She _chased_ me!”, Ducky chimed in, her hands splayed on her chest. “Scariest shit that has happened to me so far!”

“We got away fine”, Wrecker shrugged to bring down the tension.

“No injuries?”, Cody pressed.

“Just a headache. It faded pretty quick”, Hunter supplied.

“He ate is own flashbang”, Crosshair clarified.

A chorus of snorts and cackles followed, and the Sergeant leaned forward to sprawl a hand over his face.

“You too, Dani?”

It was a cruel thing to do, since she was the one who was dissimulating her laughter better.

“I should have been there instead of you, then we would have it recorded”, Tech nudged Crosshair.

“Oh, I’d exchange booth for that!”, Cody drawled, hooking an arm around Hunter’s shoulder and shaking him a bit before giving a friendly pat and letting go. “Say, Dani”, he called, and she perked up to attention. “You up for a spar? I would like to see what you can do.”

He noticed that she immediately glanced at Hunter. If to seek guidance or reassurance, he couldn’t quite distinguish; but at the Sergeant’s encouraging nod she stood up and dusted herself off.

She was already wearing comfortable clothes, anyways.

“Sure”, was her light reply.

It was so obvious that she hadn’t heard any legends going around of what Cody did on the battlefield.

Her ingenuousness was almost endearing, really.

The Commander turned to Hunter with a questioning eyebrow, but the other replied with a smug smile and a shrug.

So be it, then.

They moved away from the small camp and rumbling river, settling on a dry patch of sandy ground.

“Are you going to fight with armour?”, she asked as he got in position. “Isn’t it unfair, for a spar?”

“You’re right”, he smirked, and crossed his arms over his chest, head titled back slightly with devilish intents. “Go put on some armour.”

Dani narrowed her eyes in suspicion, but didn’t say anything as she walked to the ship to retrieve the chest plate, graves and gauntlets she used. He wasn’t going to go easy on her, huh? Fair.

She went back outside, now carrying a wary tension on her frame instead of the easy attitude she had sported while they chatted.

_Good_ , Cody thought.

The Bad Batchers settled themselves at a prudent distance as Ducky and Cody brought their guards up.

“Show me what you’ve got!”, the Commander taunted, or encouraged; Dani wasn’t very sure, but either way the words didn’t inspire any other emotion in her besides the wariness that kept her on alert.

She wasn’t one to throw the first punch, anyways, so he waited for him to come to her.

Noting the lack of impulsivity, Cody advanced. As soon as he got close to her she went from being as still as a rock to sudden, crouched movements that made him step back for reassessment; but by then she was coming at him with a punch from below. The Commander dodged that easily enough, despite the odd angle of the attack, and managed to caught her wrist at her next hit and _twisted_ to bring her to the ground and pin her down.

But she twisted faster than him to still have control and hit the ground on her back, and sprung her legs to deliver a full-body force double kick at his poor, poor stomach.

“Owwwwwww than one hurts!”, Tech commented as Cody was forced to let go and was sent backwards.

Cody skidded back, coughed, almost retched, managed to swallow it down and brushed off the pain. By the time he looked up Dani was on her feet again, waiting for him.

_No mercy, then_.

When the Commander pulled an arm back, she braced herself to block the fist.

She didn’t see the spinning flying kick coming. At all.

She only sensed a blur of white and orange in front of her and suddenly her face hurt like hell and the world didn’t make any sense. For a brief moment of detachment she thought the whole morning had been a dream.

Then the dust under her cheek became very real, and there was heavy weight on her back as Cody sat on her to pin her down.

“Dani!”, Hunter called, voice booming so much that it startled her to attention. “Show him _ALL_ you’ve got!”

All?

But she was already giving it her bes—

Oh.

_All_.

In half a blink she had cloaked herself.

“What the—?!”, Cody startled, eyes wide, and by then Ducky had already arched her back backwards and was headbutting him in a sucker punch that he _couldn’t_ see coming.

She took advantage of his dizziness to wiggle and buck, throwing him off her and swapping positions; but thought better of it and backed off so he couldn’t grab her and wrestle her back to the ground.

The Commander recovered and looked around with wide eyes, trying to find her or to find a clue as to where she was. A kick to the back of his knee sent him tumbling to the ground and he yelped at the surprise as he caught himself as he could, lips curling into a snarl.

“How did you do that?!”, he called.

But she wisely didn’t reply.

“We suspect some sort of Force-power”, Tech supplied.

“You’re a Jedi?!”

“No”, Dani replied as she swiped a leg out of under him. “I’m not affiliated to anything, just in case you were about to ask if I’m a Sith nex—”

Cody sprung to his feet and dove for her, effectively tackling her to the ground and under him, and his hands swiftly found her shoulders and arms to pin her down. He leaned back and away from where he thought her head was in an afterthought.

“Yield”, he said, and applied more pressure on her forearms.

A pained yelp emerged from under him, and he could feel legs kicking out.

“Yield”, he repeated, applying more pressure.

When her reply was a growl and frantic writhing, he softened.

“Yield. You did good.”

Ducky stilled immediately, and a moment after she bled back into sight, blinking up at Cody with wide eyes.

He let go of her and backed off so she could get up.

“You guys could have started there!”, he called to the Batchers.

“We wanted it to be a surprise”, Crosshair held his toothpick between his fingers for a moment to grin widely.

“You’ve never been to the Jedi Temple, then?”, the Commander asked Dani, holding a hand out to help her up.

“No”, she took it and stood swiftly.

“You could go there. Be trained in the Force.”

“But I don’t want to go there. I want to stay with them”, she shrugged, tilting her head towards Cody’s boys. “And they are helping me out with training!”

“She can’t lift things, but she can make them _explode_!”, Wrecker fawned.

“Yeaaaaaaah… I try not to do that too much”, she scratched the back of her head nervously. “So, uhm, I didn’t do too bad?”, Ducky asked shyly.

Cody regarded for a moment, a grin of his own spreading on his lips.

“It’s quite obvious that you’ve been trained by Cross and Hunter. There’s a lot of room for improvement, but you did fine, kid.”

It was subtle, but he noticed her puffing out.

“And the invisibility is a neat trick. I can see why you asked for the Infiltration Specialist form”, he told Hunter.

“Did you fly kick me in the face?”, Dani asked slowly. “I can’t recall well.”

“I did”, he admitted. “Sorry about the sore face and bruise you’re about to get.”

“It’s fine”, she shrugged. “Sorry about any digestive problems my kick may cause.”

“We’re even, then.”

“Indeed. Do it again? But without hitting me. I’d like to actually _see_ what you did.”

Cody let out an amused, pleased laugh.

“Of course, kid. Now; pay attention.”

And she did. If not, she would have noticed the almost awed expressions of the Bad Batchers, and she would have picked up that the Marshall Commander’s easy laughter was a rare occurrence nowadays.

“Alright, I just need to ask you some questions to fill the form”, Cody started once they we’re all settled.

Ducky and him were sitting on logs a little way from where the Bad Batchers were making themselves comfortable, lazing or stretching around in the sun.

“Sure”, she sat with her legs stretched, swaying her feet a bit: if out of boredom or nervousness or just to do something, she didn’t know.

“Full name?”

“Dani Luna.”

“Homeplanet?”

“Earth. Terra? Both are fine.”

“Terra?”, the Commander frowned. “Never heard of it. Which section is it in?”

“Uh… It’s very deep in what you call Wild Space, for what the others have told me, so I don’t think there’s a sector for it…?”, she shrugged sheepishly.

“No idea of coordinates? Vectors?”

She shook her head, lips pressed in a clueless line.

“Alright, then. Date of birth?”

“21st of—“, she interrupted herself, blinking at her feet. “My planet’s calendar isn’t going to work for this, isn’t it?”

“Afraid not”, Cody confirmed. “How old are you?”

“Nearly 17”, she replied, folding her knees to hug her legs.

“I’ll input just the year of birth, then. Unless you want to choose a day at random?”

“Pass, thanks”, she waved off with a hand.

“Any previous training experiences?”

“None until I met the others.”

The Commander nodded as he filled the form.

“Any previous military affiliations?”

“None.”

“We’re nearly done”, he informed her, and paused to look up at her, setting the datapad aside for a moment. “You’re very young. Are you sure this is what you want to do? Participate in the war?”

She leaned back at the question, but took a moment to consider his words and her feelings.

“I want to stay with Hunter and the others. I don’t care about the rest”, she finally said.

“Why?”, he asked, and had to elaborate at the confused tilt of her head. “Why do you want to stay with them?”

Dani shrugged slowly, unsure.

“I feel safe with them. I’m happy”, was all she could offer as an answer.

Cody seemed to regard her soul. She squirmed a bit in place, fretting at the thought that he might want a more logical answer.

“Well. That’s good to know”, he finally said. “Alright, then. Just one last thing to do now”, he stood up and gestured for her to do the same.

Nearby, the Batchers inched closer.

“Your swear of Allegiance to the Republic.”

The proverbial jazz music stopped.

She froze, then took a step backwards.

Cody looked up from where he had been reading on.

“Dani?”, he asked.

She looked confused. Cornered.

“What’s wrong?”, Wrecker noticed the frantic searching of her eyes.

“I-I don’t”, she stuttered, her voice shaking, “I—”

She cloaked herself.

“Shit!”, the Commander hissed, and dropped the datapad, falling again into a fighting stance.

“No, no!”, Hunter threw his hands out in what intended to be a calming gesture. “She isn’t attacking, she panicked, she’s leaving!”

“Panicked?”, Cody scowled. “At what? The—?”

The Batchers exchanged uncomfortable looks.

“She has… conflicted feelings about the Republic’s posture in the… conflict?”

The Commander levelled them with an incredulous stare.

“She told you this?”

“…Yes”, Hunter admitted for them.

“And she still asked to stay and you _want_ her to stay?”

“Yes.”

That reply had more confidence in it., surprisingly.

“Have you lost your minds?!”

They shrugged noncommittally.

“You can’t just bring along someone that might turn on you at any moment!”, the Commander fumed.

“She won’t”, Wrecker said as if it were obvious.

“How do you know?!”

“She wouldn’t”, Tech added in the same tone.

“Commander”, Hunter called, straightening into a formal posture. “I am aware of how this sounds, but Dani has already helped us in various missions without much prompting. She might not like the Republic’s political posture on this, but I’m certain she wouldn’t do _anything_ to thwart us.”

“Again: how do you—”

“She actually killed to defend me”, Tech jumped.

“She was the one to lure Ventress away when Hunter was down”, Crosshair added.

Cody had actually flinched in shock at every admission, and now turned to Wrecker.

“I just really vibe with her”, he shrugged.

“Cody”, Hunter called his attention again, his voice almost pleading. “We wouldn’t suggest this if we weren’t sure.”

They stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment.

Finally, the Commander sighed in defeat.

“I can’t believe how much I spoil you”, he huffed, and pinched his nose. “Alright, maybe we can fix something for that, but what now? The kid could be _anyware_ —”

“She went that way”, Hunter supplied, pointing with a thumb over his shoulder. Cody narrowed his eyes at him. “I can sense her even when she’s cloaked.”

“Of course you _kriffing_ can…”, he muttered angrily.

“Commander! Did you just _swear_?!”, Crosshair cackled.

“Zip it, trooper”, he scoffed, rolling his eyes, but couldn’t hide the tilt upwards of his lips. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”

Dani had gone to hide to the other side of the _Havoc Marauder_ , too afraid that they would leave her there if the situation with the Commander escalated.

They had told her not to cloak outside combat.

And she had done just that.

“—s, I’m sure”, Hunter’s voice reached her and she tensed, cursing her inability to hide from him.

“Dani?”, Cody’s voice called. “Can we talk?”

She huffed. Of course they were going to talk. Her running off wouldn’t help to anything, so she reluctantly blinked back into existence.

“Hey”, he greeted awkwardly at the wariness in her eyes and the tautness of her muscles, and gingerly sad at a respectful distance of her, for what she relaxed a bit. “So. No swearing your loyalty to the Republic.”

“My loyalty will never belong to a state, or government, or whatever the fuck the Republic is supposed to be. Much less a government that is keeping others from self-governing themselves for no other reason that they don’t want to loose control over the resources of the planets that just want to leave because they legitimately think they and their people will fare better with governments that are _right there_ and can know what problems need solving and actually _listen and act_ in response; not have to bring your problems to the other side of the galaxy and had them dismissed by people that has never been hungry or too cold or haven’t had to live through a global pandemic”, she ranted dryly.

“…So, ideologically, you’re with the Separatists”, he said carefully, trying not to sound too judgemental about it. Ducky grimaced and looked away. “Would you join the Separatists?”

“No”, she replied immediately.

“Why?”

“Because I also know about their war tactics. Using civilians as shields? Disastrous. I mean: I’m sure the Republic also has its fair share of war crimes, but…”, she trailed off.

“But?”

“…Hunter and the others are on _this_ side”, she shrugged.

A part of her felt mortally wounded. Choosing a side just because people she loved were in it felt like a betrayal to herself: a comfortable choice in exchange for her morals.

But those were her _titos_ they were talking about. She couldn’t just go and fight them on, they would never believe anything she said! And she hadn’t lied: she was genuinely happy with them.

She wasn’t a Republican, but she didn’t want to leave.

“You’re loyal to them”, the Commander said after a brief pause. Dani perked up from her thoughts, looking straight at him. “To Hunter. Tech. Crosshair. Wrecker.”

“…Yes”, she replied, pretty sure about it. “Yes; my loyalty belongs to people. To them, currently.”

“Well, we can work with that”, he hummed, and pulled out his datapad again, typing on it for a while.

Ducky looked on, but didn’t press nor ask.

“Here”, he said, and turned it to offer it to her. “I changed the Allegiance. Now, you’ll be swearing loyalty to Sergeant Hunter, not the Republic as a whole.”

She read over it, confirming what he said.

“Is that acceptable?”, he asked with a knowing smile.

“I—yes”, she breathed out.

“You can sign it, then.”

She did so shakily, as if she still couldn’t fully believe the gesture he had just made.

He could have said no. He could have kicked her out, forbidden her to stay with her friends.

But he hadn’t.

The Commander took the datapad from her hands gently.

“Welcome aboard, trooper”, he smirked, and gave her a salute, even still seated.

Dani scrambled to salute back.

“Sir”, she managed to articulate, still not really moving to stand up.

Yet again, Cody offered her a helping hand.

“Let’s get you your basic kit”, he gestured her over and she trotted after him, still feeling a bit lightheaded.

“She said yes!”, the Commander called out.

“Of course she said yes!”, Wrecker boomed back, returning from Cody’s shuttle with a crate balanced on his shoulder. “That’s why I got ahead of you!”

“You okay?”, Tech approached her to ask.

“Yeah. Sorry I bailed”, she apologised, embarrassed.

“You had high changes of having some sort of meltdown. But the subject was kind of a surprise.”

“My morals really went: things got super weird! It’s my time to shine.”

Tech snorted.

Wrecker placed the crate right in front of Ducky where she stood fairly close to the river and the freshness and clarity it was providing her at the moment; an excited smile spreading on his face.

“Come on! Open it!”

She just had to press the opening button, so it was quite anticlimactic. The cover slid away to reveal a brand-new armour: still white and shiny.

“Oh!”, she gasped, and leaned down to grab the chest plate. Her eyes were wide as saucers, taking in every detail of it.

“Better than having to wear that amalgamation that you called armour”, Cross hummed.

“We have paint, so as soon as you’ve decided how you want it, you can customize it”, Tech nudged her.

“It’s incredible. I love it!”, she awed, putting it on.

“The helmet is quite simple, so you can customize it too”, Cody supplied, internally surprised and pleased by the speed she was gearing up at.

“Awwww a new backpack!”, she lifted it out of the crate, smiling at it.

She pulled out the pieces in that fashion, until she reached the dreadful skid plate.

“No love for this one?”, Hunter asked with amusement, eyebrow arched.

“No”, she grumbled. “It looks like a diaper. I don’t like it.”

“Kid, this piece of armour is going to become your absolute _favourite_ as soon as it saves your literal _shebs_ from being burnt to a crisp”, Cody drawled.

Dani levered him with an unimpressed glance, and went back to stare at it with a grudge.

“Did you have to commission it so it could fit her?”, the Sergeant asked him, elbowing him gently to get his attention.

“Actually, somebody _kriffed_ up the size of this one and it had been lying around ever since. I’m glad to see it fits he—”

As soon as the Commander had turned a bit away, Ducky had tossed the skid plate into the rapids, and they watched it be swallowed up by the water in shocked silence.

She turned to them slowly.

“Aw, sorry. There was a spider on it and I kind of panicked”, she explained calmly, nothing but innocence in her eyes and a barely contained smile on her face.

“I—You—“, Hunter stuttered, and whatever he wanted to say was lost in Crosshair’s incredulous laughter.

“But the rest of the armour is great!”, she tried to deviate the attention. “It’s perfect! I love it! I’ll start thinking how to paint it right away”, she nodded to herself.

Cody had covered his mouth with one hand, the other supporting his elbow.

“She’s really one of yours…”, he muttered through his fingers.

“Goodbye, Commander. _K’oyacyi_ ”, Hunter clasped Cody’s forearm.

“ _Oya_!”, the Batchers replied.

“ _Oya_!”, Ducky added too, more clumsily and hesitant.

“ _Oya_ , Dani”, Cody nodded at her with a soft smile. “You ought to teach her mando’a, Sergeant”, he teased.

“We’ll have plenty of time for it, sir”, he saluted, and the others followed.

They all turned to their respective ships, having already disassembled the small camp.

High in the sky, the giant ship was still there.

“Let’s go, Dani!”, Crosshair called.

“Uh… A moment!”, she called back, and ran after Cody. “Commander!”, she called. “Commander!”

Cody perked up and turned to see her Force-jog her way to him.

“Yes?”, he asked with a tilt of his head.

“I, uh”, she took a moment to clear her throat and gather her previous thoughts, knowing that they were out of earshot from the others. “I wanted to thank you.”

“There’s no need”, he replied with a raised eyebrow. “You’ll be a nice addition to Force 99.”

“Not about that. I mean, I’m grateful about it too!”, she hurried to add. “But I wasn’t thanking you for that.”

He raised his eyebrow higher.

“The boys… They talk really well of you. Like, they legit admire you and would follow you to hell and back. And they don’t talk about it much; not to say that they don’t say a word about it at all, so what I gather is that Kamino was a very shitty place, at least for them. And Hunter did tell me that you formed Clone Force 99, so… Thank you. For getting them out of there”, she finished, pretty pleased with the way it had come out. “If you hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have got to meet them and love them”, she blurted out, and blushed instantly when she realised she had said that out loud.

Cody had been staring at her in shock, but that last part made him huff a smile.

“Well. You’re welcome about that too, kid”, he lifted a hand to ruffle her curls. “Take good care of my boys, hm?”

“Yes, sir!”, she saluted, a warm smile on her face.

The Commander regarded her for a moment more.

“Dismissed.”

He watched her Force-run back to her unit.

“We have to find you a code name!”, Wrecker exclaimed over dinner that day.

“Why?”, she asked with an arched brow, taking a generous bite of _adobo_.

“Because: Crosshair, Tech, Hunter, Wrecker _and_ Dani! It doesn’t harmonize!”

“Harmonize”, Crosshair snorted.

“Wreck, it’s _her name_. You can’t just decide to call her something else!”, Tech argued.

“But I mean: I already call you Lady! Could it be that?”, he asked her.

“I guess”, she shrugged with a playful smile. “Any other suggestions?”

“Brat”, Crosshair supplied immediately.

“Dagger!”, Tech chimed in, already sounding fascinated by it.

“ _Ad_ ”, Hunter muttered under his breath, and his brothers whipped their heads towards him with knowing eyes and treacherous smiles. “ _Beskad_! I said _beskad_.”

“Sure you did…”, the sniper muttered.

“ _Werdla_!”, Wrecker suggested.

“You HATE that word”, Tech pointed out.

“But it fits her!”

“Have something in mind?”, Hunter, who had been watching Dani’s gaze focus on an inexistent point, said loud and clear, halting any potential argument as she perked up.

“Oh! Uhm… How about Ducky?”

“Ducky?”, Cross scowled.

The others grimaced similarly as well.

“It doesn’t harmonize much either… Crosshair, Wrecker, Hunter, Tech and Ducky…”, the slicer muttered.

“Why Ducky?”, Wrecker asked, honestly clueless.

“It’s the nickname my parents gave me. Ducky”, she repeated, not quite looking at them.

She might as well set off a thermal detonator right on the table, seeing how all of them froze.

“Uh, Du—Dani; are you sure? If that’s what your parents called you, we wouldn’t want to… to overstep”, Hunter managed.

“Yeah”, she shrugged, picking up her fork again. “It feels right”, and returned to her meal.

It still took them a solid five seconds to snap out of it.

“Ducky it is”, Wrecker declared.

“Cody!”

“General”, Cody nodded back as he walked into _The Negotiator_ ’s bridge, noticing Kenobi’s sudden agitation. “What is it?”

“I think—I think I just sensed a flare, right _here_ , but… At this point I’m starting to think that it might be just wishful thinking”, the Jedi sighed. “No chance that you have spotted a baby down there, I suppose?”, he joked.

“No, sir. Can’t say I—”

Something clicked into place in his mind.

“—have”, he finished haltingly.

“Commander?”, Obi Wan inquired.

Cody gathered himself, trying not to sound too involved in what he was going to say.

“Sir, are we _certain_ that we’re looking for a baby?”

“Quite, yes”, he replied, softly rubbing his beard. “The Force-signal appeared out of nowhere, we would have noticed if it had been there before, so we can only guess that this Force-sensitive is just a few months old.”

“But… that doesn’t make any sense. A baby doesn’t move that much, neither somebody caring for a baby. And they are clearly not in enemy hands, since they are still looking for them, too.”

“What are you suggesting, Commander?”, Kenobi hummed, starting to catch on but wanting to hear it from his right-hand’s words.

“Sir, what if the Force-sensitive is old enough to travel for themselves, but they had just been out of the reach of what you can sense until now? You said the whole Council sensed them right by the galaxy’s edge, correct?”

“Indeed”, the High General’s eyes unfocused, deep in thought. “You make an interesting point, Cody. I speak to the Council about it; see if they agree to expand the search parameters. Good man, Cody”, he patted his shoulder as he left for the communications room.

Cody turned to stare through the viewport.

There was a very powerful Force-sensitive out there.

She wasn’t interested in joining a side, nor having experienced teachers to help her with her abilities.

But as long as she was with Clone Force 99, she wouldn’t fall to enemy hands, and his boys would be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cody: *is looking for the mysterious Force Baby with Kenobi*  
> Cody: *meets Ducky, a teenage girl with a rare Force power who doesn't want to join the Jedi nor the Sith and is traveling around with his boys*  
> Cody, hours later after he had met her and let them go and is back on the bridge with his General: WAIT A MOTHERFUCKING MOMENT


	16. Paint Job

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defining Ducky's armour for this AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back at uni and suffering but rest assure this fic is not abandoned

“I guess the red line is mandatory, hm?”, Ducky hummed, eyeing the vertical strip on the other’s chest plates.

“Yes. If you ruin our colour scheme you’re out”, Cross was quick on his feet.

Tech elbowed him with a reproachful look, but that only made the sniper’s smirk grow wider.

“Tech has _white_ on his armour”, she pointed out.

“Tech has privileges. We need him to run our cool gadgets.”

That costed him another elbowing, but Crosshair sputtered a laugh and gladly wrestled his brother to the floor, mindful of the cans of paint lying around.

Grey, red, black and a few remnants of white.

Dani would _kill_ for blue or green.

“You don’t have to paint it now”, Hunter reminded her gently, sitting at the galley’s table. “How much you customize it is up to you, and if you’re not inspired right now, maybe it’s just not the right moment.”

“Yeah, I mean; the armour is pretty standard right now. If you want to customize it first and then paint it, that’s fine”, Tech said, Crosshair pinned under him.

Ducky didn’t see anything standard about the armour, but that probably was because she had never seen them in bulk.

“Customize it”, she muttered, unable to come up with any idea or reason as to why should she change the armour at all as long as it did its job.

“I added my ridge”, Cross shrugged from the floor, buckling to try and get Tech off of him.

“I got more belts and pouches!”, Tech beamed, pressing Cross’ face against the ground.

“Wrecker’s got more bulk so he can withstand close-range explosions and heavy fire, and I got slots for vibroblades”, Hunter explained, not seeming to care much about the ruckus the other two were causing.

“Oh, do I get some of those?”, she asked him with contained excitement.

“Sure”, the Sergeant grinned, fondness glowing in his eyes before he seemed to push it down and clear his throat. “My point is: you should also think about what tinkering would be useful to you. If you intend on making the most of your cloaking, I think you should keep your armour light.”

“So… I get rid of armour pieces…?”

“NO!”, the other three blurted out in unison, startling her.

“No”, Tech cleared his throat. “I mean: you can _thin it_ , but I wouldn’t recommend it. Just try to keep your backpack light and you’ll be fine, but in the end it’s your decision.

“Don’t dump more armour in rivers”, Crosshair clarified.

“I get it, I get it”, she grinned, rolling her eyes, and turned back to the painfully white suit. “I’m gonna go with black”, she decided, and picked up the thickest brush.

“Oh, you could add some grey here and here, to play with shadow—”, Hunter tried to help.

“No grey!!! Only black”, Dani pouted, and kept coating the whole armour in darkness.

“Don’t forget the mandatory red stripe”, Cross scoffed.

“—nd you attach the backpack like this”, Wrecker continued, and Ducky swayed a bit as it clicked into place and the weight rested on her. “How does it feel?”

She stepped away from him and turned around, testing her balance and checking herself out in a mirror.

“It’s… weird. But not uncomfortable. I just feel like the straps are missing. You sure this won’t stress my lower back _a lot_?”

“Your chest plate should distribute the weight evenly on your shoulders, and the lack of straps means that there’s no chance those will get on your way as you move”, Tech interrupted his tinkering with is wristcomm to explain.

“I’ll get used to it, I guess”, she shrugged, turning back to the mirror.

Her form was pitch black, at exception of the red stripe over her chest. It was stark and there was nothing wrong with it, but the helmet looked dull. She was already thinking of tiny details she could add in her mind, but she wasn’t sure about them yet.

“If not, we can always requisition a different backpack. The GAR has them with straps too.”

“Hm”, Ducky resisted the urge to ask for it now. She would at least try this one out.

Hunter knocked twice loudly on the metal wall, startling them to attention.

“Bad Batch, ready to move?”, he asked, something like proud smugness in his voice.

“Yeah!”

“Standing by, Sarge.”

“Ready.”

“ _Bad Batch_?”, Dani asked pointedly with an exaggerated tilt of her head.

There was a second of confused silence.

“Oh, you hadn’t heard? We call ourselves that. Shorter than ‘Clone Force 99’”, Hunter explained nonchalantly.

“It rolls off the tongue”, Wrecker nodded along, very pleased with it.

“Why ‘bad’?”, she still asked with clear displeasure as she followed them out the ship and into the wild.

Their helmets swung slowly to each other, and Ducky just looked between them, sensing that she was getting into sensible ground and ready to back down on that when Crosshair sighed loudly.

“We’re not exactly regular clones”, he rolled his head, and she wasn’t sure if he had a kink he was trying to get rid of or if that was the next level of an eyeroll. “I don’t know about your planet, but on Kamino; if you’re different, you’re unwelcome.”

He made a pause, head turned to her. The sniper was trying to gauge her reaction, but it was hard. Dani had just started wearing armour: her usual body language was muffled by it. She would learn to exaggerate it, in time, but right now it was jerky and discreet, and he could only know that she was thinking and/or slightly uncomfortable because her head was tilted forward.

Why he found unacceptable that he might have upset her; he still didn’t know.

“It was an insult. Now it’s our pride”, he concluded, and her head jerked to face him.

“…Damn, that’s a very good reason”, she pouted jokingly, shielding herself and luckily them too from what she sensed was buried pain.

She wanted to ask. Of course she wanted to ask. She _craved_ to know, even if a part of her was afraid of the knowledge. She wouldn’t yank the words out of them. Not now, not ever.

“Now I can’t even suggest my proposal!”, Ducky kept joking, clearly wanting them to prod.

“What proposal?”, Tech took the bait with a defeated sigh.

“Okay, hear me out!”, her voice was already pitching in excitement, and it was that moment they all knew she was about to say something horrible. “It’s a very tiny shift, the acronym keeps being BB _and_ it’s a synonym of badassery on Earth!! It even comes with the follow up: you can’t kill me!”

“Say it already”, Crosshair shook his head, already filled with dread.

Meanwhile, Wrecker seemed extremely interested in it and Hunter and Tech were waiting for the inevitable expectantly.

“Bad Bitch!”

“NO.”

“You guys are no fun.”

“Shhhhhhhhhit”, Crosshair drawled, squinting at the distance when Tech was still doing zoom with his visor and Hunter was pulling out his scope.

“What?”, the Sergeant asked.

“There’s turrets there”, he took out a toothpick and rattled it nervously between his teeth.

“Manned?”, Hunter asked, assessing himself.

“Doesn’t look like so to me.”

“I’m picking up a great power grid up ahead. Must be automatized.”

“Ah. That’s what the buzz was, then”, Hunter muttered.

“Uhhh what do we do about them?”, Dani asked out of cluelessness.

She didn’t need to remind them that she had never trained with turrets and, therefore, didn’t know how to deal with them.

“Blow them up”, Wrecker answered immediately with the dignity of somebody who just calmly answered a disturbing philosophical question.

“We have to get close to do that”, Crosshair grumbled.

“Well, get on it then, mister sniper!”

“Too far to hit them with the heavy stuff”, he grumbled back.

“They can probably be deactivated”, Tech reminded them diplomatically.

“Orrrrrrrr we can be blow them up!”

“We’ll split up and create a distraction so the others can slip in and disarm the turrets”, Hunter declared, arms crossed, and that seemed to be it.

“Or I could cloak all of us and we could all sneak in together”, Dani shrugged.

They all turned to stare at her.

“It’s an option”, Tech hummed.

“And it bets everything on your ability to keep us cloaked that long—”, the Sergeant gestured to the wide stretch separating them from the fortified building, “—and until we find a way to get inside, probably. I think it’s risky.”

“The _audacity_ ”, she snorted. “Really. You, the guys who like to run straight into things and blowing them up; are telling me that my sneaky approach is risky. I’m going to have an aneurism here.”

“Ducky—“, Hunter started, if not shy or not realising about the parental tone he was using, the others weren’t sure.

“I know, I know! I’m not trying to dispute you, just bitching, it’s all”, Dani raised her hands in surrender.

He sighed, visibly relaxing.

“We’ll give a try to your plan another time, alright?”

“Alright”, she nodded, not really getting why he was trying to comfort her about this. It wasn’t as if he had hurt her pride or anything.

“Alright, then Batchers!”, and there he went again, with his Sergeant tone. “Wre—”

“Dibs on distraction!”

“—cker and I will be the distraction.”

“YES!”

“Cross?”

“I’ll perch and cover you.”

“Good. Tech and Ducky; _you_ will be cloaked and find a way in to put down the turrets.”

“Copy.”

“Yessir!”, Dani saluted, and skipped to pair off with Tech.

“You wanna take point?”

“As long as you guide me”, she shrugged, readying her DC.

“We’re in position”, the slicer reported after an uneventful walk around the building.

Dani didn’t even feel strained. She was pretty proud of that.

“Copy, commencing distraction.”

She should have expected it, but the loud boom still startled her.

“You get used to it”, Tech patted her shoulder.

“You really don’t need to try to make me feel better about this”, she huffed with a low giggle.

“Just appreciate my effort”, he shot back, voice laced with amusement as he typed on on his forearm device, scanning the walls in front of them.

“Appreciated”, she replied in kind with a small bow, even though he wasn’t really looking at her.

His shoulders jumped in the beginning of a laugh, but aborted the gesture when the device beeped.

“I’ve got a way in”, he reported, and swiftly walked along the wall, headed for the corner. He stopped before rounding it and jerked his head in an indication for her to go on.

Ducky cloaked herself and stepped into the open, calmly assessing the situation.

“Well?”, Tech prompted.

“They’re brining crates in through a door, yeah.”

“How many?”

“Four: two workers, two guards.”

“Can you take the guards by surprise?”

“Mmmm they’re a bit apart, but I’ll manage.”

“We’re doing it in T minus ten.”

“Gottcha.”

As she jogged towards position, Dani considered her options. She could kill one with a vibroblade, the other with her blaster. Or both with blasters, or both with vibroblade. Hunter looked so badass when he slashed through droids, but being honest, she wasn’t sure she could pull it off.

Yet.

At T minus one, she uncloaked herself, dark figure materialising out of thin air to drive the droid’s attention away from the corner where Tech was about to dart out of.

She shot a droid in the head as the other let out a startled screech, and shot it too as it fumbled to aim at her.

The other two fell to Tech’s blaster fire, and that was the end of it.

“You coming?”, he asked, already halfway through the door, when he noticed that she was just standing there.

“Did you see how I scared them?”, she asked him, contained excitement in her voice.

“Yeah”, he snorted. “Hunter would have your ass for getting cocky.”

“You won’t rat me out”, she waved it off, hurrying to reunite with him.

“You seem very sure about that.”

“You’re just too good, Tech. You wouldn’t do that to me”, Dani’s voice was nothing but serene, but still he was pretty sure she was grinning.

“Bribed with words…”, he shook his head to himself, and went back to work.

They navigated the halls cloaked, passing by meagre patrols and presumed workers. Tech guided them deep and down into the buildings to badly illuminated maintenance zones, and tucked himself among panels and cables.

“Watch my back”, was all he said before he dove into his screen again.

The noises of a scuffle were very distant from there. Ducky wondered if the others were alright. The urge to call them was strong, but they had already drilled into her that distractions could be fatal on the field.

They would call if they needed help.

She really hoped they wouldn’t call.

That room unnerved her. If the only access was the way they had come in, then they could be easily bottled if they were discovered. Dani made an attempt at amplifying her Force-sight, but there were no droids coming their way for now.

“If you like piña colada…”, she sang quietly to herself.

She had never had piña colada. Never would, probably, unless she found space pineapple. If the drink had any pineapple at all.

Thinking of home, tears welled in her eyes, and she rushed to blink them back.

_Mission. Focus._

“Done!”, Tech cheered from behind her. When she turned, he was already activating his wristcomm. “Turrets should be powering down about now, Sarge!”

“Copied and confirmed, Tech. Good job. We’ll meet you on the way there.”

“Yessir”, he replied curtly, and cut the connection, swiftly gathering his things and standing up. “You heard the boss.”

Ducky eagerly cocked her blaster and went for the exit, waiting for him to catch up before cloaking them again.

They encountered a few patrolling pairs and they just shot them down.

“Man, this is easy”, she couldn’t help but giggle.

“Well, it is when nobody is shooting back at you, that I agree on”, the slicer admitted. “But _don’t_ get cocky. You can still get blown up by a trap or shot by a stray bolt.”

“I get it, I get it”, Ducky rolled her eyes, making an effort to ignore the gruesome images popping up in her mind.

Tech watched her stiffen, and while he felt a bit sorry for scaring her, he knew he was doing her a favour by keeping her on edge.

Overconfidence is what got shinnies killed, and as much as they liked to think that they were different from the rest of the GAR; that was what Dani was right now: a shiny, a rookie, the most vulnerable of them all. Forget about her Force-powers and the barebones training they had given her or the Marshal Commander’s approval: she needed a lot more seasoning before they would be willing to leave her unsupervised.

And _somehow_ , he got _first watch_.

“Tech!”, she slapped his arm, bringing him out of his thoughts. “The others have droids behind them! Should we circle them and catch them in a crossfire like before?”

It took him a moment to recall that she could sense the position of people and droids within her range and another to remember the usual outcome of any Batcher being chased by clankers.

“No, they will just toss a thermal detonator to blow them up. If we went there we would end up in the blast.”

“…If you’re sure”, she replied, and only her voice was indicative of her unease.

Maybe they should actively teach her more expressive body-language.

“Yes”, he reassured her firmly. For what he gathered of Ducky, she wasn’t the kind to run off, but better be safe than sorry. “The others might be reckless, but they also know when they are way over their heads. They would call us if they needed reinforcements, really.”

“Okay”, she replied after gulping down, sounding more confident.

“We’re here”, Tech realised, and plastered himself against the wall.

Dani screeched to a halt and cloaked herself on reflex before plastering herself by his side and becoming visible again.

“Sense anything?”, he asked, deciding not to chid her about her slip-up.

“At least eight droids inside. Hunter and the others are near.”

“Can you give me an ETA?”, Tech asked with a raised eyebrow.

Ducky’s head turned slightly away. He could almost picture her unfocused eyes.

“Uhm… no more than two minutes, I’d say.”

“We’ll hold position and wait for them”, he decided.

She nodded and leaned back against the wall, blaster at the ready. She craved to use the vibroblade Hunter had lent her, but after this experience it was quite clear that knives weren’t the more convenient weapons in this case.

Pity.

Soon enough the sound of armoured footsteps reached their ears and the three other commandos appeared skidding around a corner.

Tech immediately started flashing battle sign, while Dani waved at them enthusiastically, glad to see that they were okay.

Wrecker waved back and went to position himself with Crosshair and Hunter at the other side of the door.

“You’re the last one entering”, Tech made clear.

“Y’all”, she complained flatly, but didn’t put up any resistance.

Instead, she bolted inside when it was her turn as fast as she could blaster drawn; only to barely be able to see Hunter slicing a droid’s head off, Wrecker punching another one’s torso into scrap and Cross effortlessly shooting down a runner.

“DUDES!!!”, Dani threw her hands in the air and let them fall heavily on her thighs. “You could have left me one!”

“Uh… sorry!”, Wrecker shrugged sheepishly.

“Quit whining, you’ll have more chances”, Crosshair _really_ was able to roll his eyes with his voice. “Now go with Tech. It’s learning time.”

The fact that they couldn’t see her scowl was an offense of the universe. Seeing that the others were already posted on all entrances while Tech was tearing a panel away from the main terminal, she walked up to him.

“Learning what?”, she crossed her arms, the mild irritation in her voice mostly for show.

“If there’s ever the situation where you are the only one able to access a place, we need you to be able to download data on your own. Sit down, I’ll walk you through it.”

Ducky was glad that was done with. She had sighed and forced herself to pay attention. She was aware it was important, but she had never had a good relationship with computers. Now, finally back at the _Havoc Marauder_ and having taken her fair share of notes to go over, she dumped her backpack, detaching it with a click and letting it thump against the floor of the cockpit.

“I want one with straps”, she said loud and clear, and marched off towards the now only supply room.

“Hey! You have to put your things away!”, Wrecker picked it up and followed her, confusion clear in his expression.

Dani had always been tidy, he didn’t get why she would now just drop her bag and walk off.

Unless she was offended and decided to be a brat about it?

When he faced her, he found her already hugging the paint cans to her body.

“Later! I know how I want to paint my armour now!”

Her words echoed around the ship, and suddenly ALL gear was abandoned as they went to crowd around her on the galley’s floor, where there was more space.

Ducky was already setting her armour on the floor, her helmet between her hands.

“So?”, Hunter prompted. “What have you decided?”

She sent a ferocious grin towards Tech over her shoulder.

“I want to be scary!”, she stated, and pulled the red paint can closer. “Earlier I appeared after a droid, and if they were able to poop, I bet it would have shit itself.”

She smiled at the snorts she caused.

“So I basically want to look intimidating, so even if I’m not cloaked I might gain a few seconds to react if someone spots me.”

“Hm. Well thought”, Tech agreed.

“So I’ve been thinking”, Dani went on, dipping a medium sized brush on the red paint. “Of scary things and the like, and I have decided I want to look somewhere between a Pugot and a Bal-Bal.”

“What are those?”, Crosshair humoured her, peering over Tech’s shoulders.

“Scary creatures”, she tried to shrug it off, but there was a tension gathering around her that spoke of stories about to be told. “The pugot is a headless creature. Completely black. Moves hella fast!”

“So you want to look… like you’re decapitated?”, Wrecker cringed.

“I thought I could paint all my body armour with red and leave the helmet black, so against an already dark background I _would_ look headless”, Ducky told them, holding the helmet higher. “But then I thought: what is scarier than no head?”, she turned her slowly to them, a wicked smile on her face. “ _Floating eyes_.”

And with that, she drew two empty circles around where her eyes were hidden when she wore it.

“And I wouldn’t want people to figure out that they caught me by surprise, so I’m adding a pair on the back, too!”, she muttered to herself, turning it around to draw the same uneven eyes.

The Bad Batchers watched and listened, wide-eyed.

“And the body looks boring if I leave it black, and painting it all red would mean be _very_ visible when I’m not cloaked, so that’s when the bal-bal comes in”, Dani went on, heedless of their reactions. “You see; the bal-bal feeds on human corpses, so it has long claws and teeth to tear through the clothes. So I’m basically adding claws, yeah.”

She passed the brush along the gauntlet, the claws looking like jagged claw marks themselves, varying on width and with sharp edges. She did the same to her boots, and added a single, thicker line over the pieces that protected her humerus and calves in a parody of a floating red skeleton.

“Aaaaaand that’s mostly it. I might work on it later, maybe add a few touches, but that’s mostly it. What do you think?”, she asked, turning to her companions to find them wide-eyed and frozen. “Guys?”

“…You’ve ever seen them?”, Wrecker asked reverently after along moment of tension.

“Seen wha—“, it dawned on her mid question. “Pugots and bal-bals?”

They nodded slowly.

“Prrrrrrrffff, no! Those aren’t real!”, she laughed.

The commandos deflated with noisy exhales and groans. Hunter and Wrecker leaned on the walls, Tech dropped on his ass, Cross turned and left, swatting the air as if he were smacking Ducky in the head while she laughed her ass off.

“What? Did I scare you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tech, thinking about Dani: .....baby.........
> 
> Join the serie's Discord server, if you'd like!  
> Discord server: https://discord.gg/Fc2WjTn


	17. Welcome To The Jungle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A surprise for Ducky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I bring you this humble chapter...

“Where are we?”, Dani asked sleepily, still rubbing at her eyes to clear her vision as she entered the galley and realized that the engine was off.

Their next objective was still a day away, as far as she knew.

“You’ve ever been to a jungle?”, Tech asked instead of answering.

“I… no? No. Why?”, she scowled, already imagining the ship parked in the middle of nowhere.

As usual.

“You completed your first mission ever the other day“, Hunter started, putting down his mug.

“We would normally celebrate with booze, but Sarge said no”, Wrecker lamented.

“Yeah, I say no to booze too”, she muttered as the other took in air to defend himself. “I mean: you go and drink to me if you want. But I’m more of a soda kind of person”, she mumbled, going to grab the milk.

A can of soda was slammed in front of her.

Dani blinked at it, dumbfounded; arm jerkily going to grab it.

“Wha—”

“Congrats on not dying!”, Cross raised his mug in a toast.

“Congrats on _your start_ ”, the Sergeant punctuated, also raising his drink.

“Both?”, Ducky huffed with amusement, cracking the soda open.

“Both!”, Tech and Wrecker cheered, and they toasted together.

Soda for breakfast.

“Why are we in a jungle, then?”, she asked after taking the first gulps.

“You mentioned you are interested in biodiversity in general”, Tech piped up, biting on the jerky he had served himself. “And I’ve found several wildlife identification guides for this biome in particular, so we could go on a trip, if you’d like?”

Dani’s eyes flew to his, unblinking, pastry held mid-air in the way to her mouth.

“…We don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. We thought you might like the idea, but if you rather do something el—”

“I would LOVE that!”, she interrupted him before he could babble further, all her excitement coming out in a single exhale. “Are we going now?! How much time can we stay?! Can I see the guides now?!”

It took a moment, but Tech eased back into motion, a smile twitching on his face.

“I’ll send them to you right now.”

“We can stay here all day”, Hunter informed her. “We’re going out as soon as you’re ready.”

At his words, Dani stuffed what was left of her pastry in her mouth and tossed her head back to down the soda.

“Little gods, you’re going to throw up”, Crosshair cautiously leaned away.

She whipped her lips with the back of her hand and burped loudly.

“Sorry. Are you all coming too?”

“I’m out”, the sniper waved. “Wrecker and I have a long due sabacc game.”

“Sorry, Lady”, the other shrugged sheepishly. “But I’ll be on the lookout in case you need backup.”

“I’m coming”, Tech piped up.

“Me too.”

“Okay!”, Ducky jumped over them to head out. “I’m going to gear up! I’ll be outside!”

They heard her run to her room and slam herself against something. Maybe a wall, maybe a door.

“Maybe next time let’s try to not give her good news and caffeine at the same time, see what happens”, Crosshair suggested off-hand.

Quiet mutters agreed with him.

Dani was doing her third sweep of the guide by the time Tech and Hunter finally joined. She had seemed engrossed by it, so still and with wide eyes that flew over the letters and took in every detail of the pictures and illustrations that Tech had thought she would end up declining the trip to instead read the whole guide.

But as soon as he stepped down the first rung Ducky startled out of her stupor and jumped to her feet, turning to face them.

“Where are we going?”, she asked, half stepping aside as if to let Hunter take the lead, as usual.

“Wherever you want”, he shrugged, offering the lead back.

She stilled for a moment, but before they had time to encourage her further a smile blossomed on her face and she turned away from them, head swivelling around.

“There!”, she chirped, and headed a little off to the left, mountain boots crunching on the fallen leaves and earth.

They didn’t walk very far before Dani made the first stop.

She walked to the sparse plants that were able to grow in the shades of the taller trees, sliding her gloved fingers over the gigantic leaves before pinching an edge and turning it around. Bugs crawled frantically as she did so and she yelped, letting go of it.

“Not a fun of bugs?”, Hunter teased lightly.

But Ducky was already grabbing the leaf again.

“I’ll let you know that I’m a _great_ fan of bugs. Bugs are hot shit. I got startled, that’s all”, her fake defensive tone teased back and the Sergeant hummed as Tech stepped closer to watch the insects.

“None of this pop up in my toxic fauna list”, he mused, flickering his visor up. “It’s safe to touch them if you want.”

“It’s fine, I’m just watching”, she waved him off, her tone thankful nonetheless. She pulled a bit harder on the leaf, and it tore from the steam, raining bugs on their feet. “Whoops!”

Dani dropped it on the ground, watching the bugs squirm under the leaf only to lift it and start carrying it away.

“Wow”, Tech mused.

“Eusocial arthropods are cool. I wonder if they are going to eat it or use it to farm fungus”, she wondered to herself.

“Would they _eat_ the leaf?”, Hunter questioned.

“Well, I don’t know about here, but the main herbivores in rainforests on Terra are insects”, she shrugged, and walked off to the next interesting thing.

It was a while of wandering and being derailed by bugs and birds flapping by, with the occasional reptile climbing up and down the trees. With the erratic pattern they were following, it was easy getting lost; but that didn’t concern Hunter. It was one of the main reasons why he was accompanying them, after all. That way, Tech didn’t have to worry about mapping their route, and he could enjoy himself as much as Ducky. It was pleasant to walk around without having to worry about getting shot. He still had an eye out in case some predator spotted them, but as long as the fauna didn’t spontaneously learn to use a blaster, he had it covered.

It was also nice to listen to Dani’s chatter, even if he already knew some of the things she commented. She carried this kind of excitement: in her eyes, her voice, her whole posture. She _exuded_ life, quirks and gestures and sudden turns or abrupt changes of subject unrestrained.

_Lacks discipline_ , a traitorous voice whispered in the depths of his mind.

He swatted it away, along with the fear of looking at her after a hard mission only to see numbness at best.

The fear stayed.

“Sarge?”

Tech’s voice startled him out of his thoughts, and when his eyes focused on his surroundings the pair was sitting on the ground, already unwrapping their lunch.

“We said to take a break”, he continued.

“Right. Good idea”, he plopped down, and so they sat in a loose circle.

“You okay?”, Dani asked, ever so unconcerned of the unspoken rule of letting noticeable uneasiness on somebody slide.

“Yeah”, he cleared his throat. “Just thinking.”

“No thoughts”, she deadpanned, and for a second he wondered if she was scolding him. “Head empty.”

And went back to munching on her ration and scrolling through the guide.

“Look”, she leaned to elbow Tech and showed him the datapad. “I think _this_ is the butterfly we saw. It has the white spots further down the wings, see? The one we thought it was had it around the middle.”

“I dunno. I don’t recall it well, but maybe you’re right.”

“Aw, I should have taken pics!”

“I mean, we have my recordings…”, he recalled, trying to manoeuvre one of his many devices one-handed.

“Eat your food first”, Hunter reminded them.

They openly rolled their eyes at him, but didn’t argue. Hunter scoffed in disbelief, but didn’t even try to call them out on that because he could feel his own grin and it wasn’t going away, so he hid it by eating.

Ducky and Tech weren’t done with their food yet, so the Sergeant took a moment to check their surroundings. They had been walking for the better part of the morning, so if they wanted to be back to the ship before dark it wasn’t in their best interest to go any further.

A shift in the humidity in the air compelled him to look up, but the thick canopy prevented him from getting a good look at the sky. Instead, his fingers grasped at the earth and he brought the soil to his nose, sniffing it quietly.

The feeling of eyes on him made him look up.

“Are you smelling the hummus?”, Dani was grinning, clearly amused.

“Oh, yeah, he does that”, Tech nudged her. “And if you hadn’t interrupted him you would have gotten a good look at the intense face he pulls.”

“Ha, ha; very funny”, Hunter said dryly, rolling his eyes. “I thought it might rain. I was checking.”

“Aren’t you worried that it might have excrements in it?”, she asked on, hand loosely over her mouth the cover the dwindling smile.

“No?”, he raised an eyebrow. “To be honest I have barely seen excrements around here. Some compact things: mostly from lizards and small mammals, I guess. I’ve spotted some twisted ones, but by the size of them the predator that left them there isn’t too big to be a worry.”

He had been ready to drop the subject at any moment, but Dani looked on with wide, interested eyes, nodding slightly along as she absorbed the information; but now a mischievous grin was spreading back on her face.

“What?”, the Sergeant asked, almost on the defensive.

There was a visible effort on her part to school her expression, but she seemed to give up before taking in a deep breath, still grinning madly, and going:

“Well, that’s what I would call _shitty_ knowledge!”

Tech wheezed and Hunter snorted loudly as she finally set her laughter free, leaning backwards to lie on the ground and even roll around a bit.

“Okay, okay; that was a good one”, the Sergeant admitted, and the proud grin Ducky gave him when she sat up made him glad of that admission. He then cleared his throat.

“We should head back”, Tech jumped before he could say it. “We still have quite a trek to get back to the _Marauder_.”

“Yeah. And I wanted to try and catch something on our way back.”

“Okay”, Dani breathed out. “Can’t wait to take a shower…”, tiredness laced her words as she stretched an arm to drag her backpack close.

“If we head straight back, it shouldn’t take more than a couple hours”, Hunter approximated.

Tech and Dani let out resigned sighs but didn’t complain, just gesturing for him to take the lead.

They walked in silence for a long while, in which they mostly only aided each other through the trickiest parts of the terrain. Ducky walked between the two men, head still swivelling to take everything in but dutifully not abandoning the formation.

“You think we’ll find something?”, Tech asked after their third stop to drink. “We didn’t spot anything remotely big on our way there.”

“And we shouldn’t waste time with small things. Nobody wastes time hunting for things that won’t be filling”, Dani supplied.

“Yes, well, your guide do says there are some deer-like animals around here, don’t they?”, the Sergeant turned slightly to reply.

“They do”, she hummed. “But we didn’t—”

“We didn’t spot anything worthwhile because we’re not being particularly sneaky”, Hunter cut her. “All we have been able to watch is because it either didn’t consider us a threat or because it wasn’t fast enough to leave. Everything else left way before it was in our sights.”

“Hm. I could cloak us”, she suggested with a shrug.

“Hold on that thought. But for now; how about we work together to spot something?”

“Sure!”, Ducky chirped immediately, and closed her eyes for a moment, invoking the Force-sight.

The first presences she saw were Tech’s and Hunter’s: now so familiar that she could sense them with minimum effort. Next came the trees, looming around them, helping to map out her surroundings. Smaller animals the size of mice buzzed into her sight, skittering out of their way as soon as they felt the vibrations of their steps. Dani could also spot clusters of bugs converging on food or trailing up and down the trees in neat lines.

But no sign of anything remotely worthy of chasing.

“Hm… I’m not sensing anything interesting…”

“Keep trying. Maybe we’ll be lucky once we get close to that stream again.”

“Gottcha”, she watched her next step, scanning the coming terrain to make sure she wouldn’t misstep when she didn’t see the ground around her; and let her sight melt into the Force again.

She hadn’t experimented much with the Force-sight, to be honest. Sporadic sweeps had become a sort of tic, but it felt reassuring when she sensed Wrecker and the others nearby. Other than that, she had had no reason to try and go deeper: people walked in and out of her range and she was aware of them until they left, but that was it.

So Ducky rolled her shoulders before letting out a long exhale, and tried to… expand?

It was hard. Like squinting really hard to try and focus on something that was too far away, looked to small to recognise. Wasn’t Hunter able to ‘see’ things with great detail? If he could then it would be more useful if she focused on improving range instead, but maybe she could do it, too.

So Dani tried to draw up the life around her.

More bugs popped up with their tiny lights, lighting up the ground as they crawled and slithered bellow their feet. Tiny lives, but lives nonetheless.

The intensifying of her Force-sight continued, a heavy feeling in her head as more and more lives blinked in her awareness: each individual moss, each egg laid and nestled under the dirt or in the canopy, the lizard and birds zooming in and out of her range—

It felt like the ground fell away from her feet, a high pitch in her brain, and she felt it.

A fungus. An humongous fungus, hyphae reaching _everywhere_ , eating away and the fallen leaves and the corpses hidden among them, and still, in the spaces the fungus didn’t occupy—

Bacteria.

The whole ground _burned_.

Ducky let out a strangled gasp and looked up, but still, she was blinded: the trees, the lizards, _pollen and seeds suspended in the air, carrying life EVERYWHERE—_

She didn’t hear herself scream. She wasn’t even aware of being moved, of the jolting of running, because the world was blinding white. She fought to close her eyes, to cover her ears, to do _whatever it took_ to stop seeing, stop sensing, but everything kept being white, so white she couldn’t distinguish a thing; she was alone, _alonealonealonealonealonealone_ —

And suddenly, or after a lot of time, she couldn’t even tell, the white was left behind, finally sleeping out of her range, and only four steady dots were left in its wake.

“—kay. You’re okay. We’re leaving atmo now. You’re okay.”, a tightly controlled voice broke through, and Dani gasped before slumping on the bunk, exhausted.

Gloved fingers swept over her wet cheeks.

“Hey there. You with us?”

Ducky swallowed, but her throat felt raw, so she just nodded.

“Are you feeling better?”, Hunter kept asking.

“Yeah”, she croaked.

“Can you tell us what happened?”

Her hand was squeezed, but the angle wasn’t right. She peeked to see Wrecker visibly making an effort to give her space.

“I—Everything was too bright. There were—There were things _everywhere_ —“, she whined.

“Okay. Okay, I think you had some… some sort of Force sensory overload. The void of space helps, yeah?”

“Yeah”, she nodded faintly.

“Good. I have the same trouble, sometimes. Does something hurt?”

“Head”, she whimpered.

“Alright. Cross is getting you some painkillers, then you sleep, hm? When you’re better I’ll teach you some tricks”, he caressed her hair softly.

“’M sorry I ruined the day”, she mumbled, closing her eyes.

“Hey, you didn’t ruin anything. We had a blast, that won’t change because you weren’t feeling well at the end, alright?”

“We didn’t get to hunt anything…”

“There will be other chances. Rest now.”

Everything was blessedly black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ecology facts machine kinda broke...
> 
> A MOMENT OF ATTENTION PLEASE, I'D LIKE TO ASK A FAVOUR  
> So, in the Discord server the subject of the Batchers as Birds popped up, since Dani is a Ducky...  
> The conclusion is that Crosshair is a flamingo, Wrecker is a great grey owl, Tech is a bearded vulture or blue jay, and Hunter is a canadian goose, and if someone could draw that they would make me very very happy.  
> Also, someone made vine compilations of Ducky and the Bad Batch plus their own OCs!!!  
> I fricking love it ;_;  
> Discord server: https://discord.gg/Fc2WjTn


	18. UNO For All, And All For UNO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't play poker, and therefore I also don't understand sabacc, so... yeah.

“Straight flush”, Crosshair declared.

“Please just tell me what cards you have…”, Dani implored.

He reached out and tilted her cards to be able to see them.

“…Doesn’t matter, I win again.”

“Does he?!”, she barked at Wrecker, who leaned to see her cars and the ones Cross had already spread on the table.

“It seems so. Sorry, Lady”, he shrugged.

“ARGH!”, she faceplanted against the table, exasperated. “I just don’t _get it_!”

“That’s totally fine”, the sniper grinned, dragging the betted chocolate tablet to his arms, and checked her cards again. “Damn, I won by _way far_. Why did you keep grabbing cards? You could have done something with what you had early in the game. Don’t you count cards?”

“I’m a lesbian and you expect me to do maths when it’s not a life-or-death situation?”, she scoffed.

“I thought you were Filipina?”, Hunter muttered absentmindedly, and by the time he had realised what he said the others were already laughing their asses off, so he shook his head to himself and dove back into his report.

“Bold of you to assume I remember the value of the cards”, Ducky sighed after that brief laugh. “The only numbers I had clear were the—UNO ones…”, she hummed, raising her head slowly with eyes far away and an excited smile growing on her face.

“Hm. We could try that one if you explain us the rules”, Crosshair offered.

“No, these cards won’t do”, she tapped her fingers rapidly against the table. “Do we have paper? No, flim—flimisi? Fimsli. Filsi. _Fis—_ ”

“Flimsi”, Tech provided.

“That!”

“Some, yes.”

“Do you need it? Can I grab it?”, she asked hopefully.

“I don’t need any. Sarge?”

“Can’t think of anything I would need it for”, Hunter hummed from where he was finishing up his report.

“You can grab it”, Tech declared.

“Hey! What about Wrecker and I? You aren’t going to ask _us_?”

“I have _literally_ never seen you with a piece of flimsi in your hands, guys”, the slicer deadpanned.

Dani was already rummaging through drawers and cabinets.

“I’m holding cards _right now_ ”, Cross snarked.

“You know what I mean!”

“Is this it?”, she quietly asked Wrecker, not wanting to get in the middle of the others’ bickering.

“I reckon”, he nodded. “Watcha gonna do with it?”

“UNO cards! Want to help me out?”

“Sure”, he put away the grocery list he had been compiling.

“Okay, I’m going to grab my markers because we need colours. We have to make 108 cards, so, uh, try to figure out a way to cut the flismi—”

“Flimsi”, he corrected patiently.

“—the flimsi so we have enough to make them all.”

“With this?”, Wrecker waved the scarcely ten sheets of cellulose paste with a dubious expression.

“…Yeah, I’ll see if I can sacrifice a page or two from my colouring book”, she grimaced, and slipped away.

“—hat I meant is that you _always_ write on datapads, and you know it!”

“But you could have _asked_!”, Crosshair insisted.

“You always do this! Whenever you get bored you find something to bitch about!”

“Hey!”, the other tensed up.

“You could just admit that you weren’t going to use the flimsi anytime soon, but nooooo: the whiny baby wanted it for himself!”

“You take that back RIGHT NOW!”

Ducky walked back in and plucked a yellow marker in Tech’s hand and a green one in Cross’ before moving on to leave the red one in front of Wrecker, who was already ripping the unfolded flimsi.

She gathered a few squares he had already made and splayed them in front of Cross.

“—‘re gonna throw hands, huh—”

“SSSHH”, she hushed them loudly, and shot an arm up to grab the sniper’s shoulder and drag him down to his seat. “Draw numbers from 0 to 9 or I’ll have to do it all myself and it’ll be a week before I can kick your ass at UNO. You too, Tech. Same thing, different colour.”

The two brothers glared at each other and glanced at Hunter, only to see that their Sergeant was already glaring at them. They ducked their heads and set to work with a pout.

“How far along are you with that report?”, Dani asked from his other side, and he turned to find her eyeing his work, hands behind her.

“Ah… nearly done. Just review it and it’ll be ready. Why?”

She unfolded her hands from behind her back and offered him a blue marker.

“Help us with the cards? Wrecker is still cutting the fsismi—”

“Flimsi.”

“—flimsi and we still need the blue cards, the red cards, and I have to make all the special ones.”

“Alright, alright”, he took the marker from her. “Give me five minutes and I’ll get to it.”

“Cool! Thanks”, she smiled brightly, and turned to join the rest of the Bad Batch in painting cards.

“I’m done”, Crosshair grumbled, offering her the mostly white cards.

“Paint them a bit more”, she suggested.

“But I already painted the numbers!”

“Well, paint the corners too, or make doodles or something as long as the number is clear! Get creative! You too, Tech.”

“Yes, ma’am!”, he saluted without taking his attention of his cards.

“Done!”, Wrecker laid the blank cards on the table. Ducky pushed the red marker towards him and, with only a quick glance to what the others were doing, he set to work.

Hunter joined them soon after, starting on the blue cards while Dani drew the special ones.

The cards ended up with a wide array of customization: some with diagonal stripes, asterisks, circles, even doodles of blasters or animals or plants or random letters. Dani shuffled them with wide eyes.

“Are they… okay?”, Hunter dared ask.

“Uh? Oh, yes!”, she snapped out of it to reassure them, only for her eyes to drift to the cards again. “It’s just—I love them. A lot.”

They might not be standard, but these cards you couldn’t buy anywhere.

“So, uhm, want to play?”, she perked up.

“If you explain us the rules”, Tech prompted.

“What do we bet?”, Crosshair smirked in anticipation.

The devilish smile that spread on Ducky’s face was hair-curling.

“Oh, no no; this isn’t a betting game. It’s a _friendship ending_ game.”

“UNO”, Crosshair announced triumphantly three rounds later.

Tech narrowed his eyes at him and threw a card at the pile, his hands _still_ overflowing with cards. Dani threw in a change of colour from red to yellow, hoping to throw Cross off.

The smug smile he sent her way only confirmed that she had made him a favour.

“Aw, shi—”

Wrecker dropped another card, looking pretty pleased with himself.

Hunter threw in a ‘Skip’.

“MOTHERFUC—”

Tech threw another card.

Dani pulled out a ‘Reverse’.

There was a second of stillness that immediately set Cross on edge.

“Oh”, Tech breathed, lips curling upwards.

“No”, the sniper blurted.

“ _Oh_ , I love you so much.”

“NO.”

“It’s my thanks for not using those on me”, she patted Tech’s arm amicably.

“I knew it would pay off…”

“NO!”

Four ‘Wildcard +4’ were placed on the pile.

They called it a day when Wrecker noticed Dani’s head bobbing.

They had lots count of the rounds they had played, intent on getting revenge for the continual betrayals. The girl mumbled a half-hearted counterargument before going ‘you know what?’, and retiring to her bed.

The commandos still lounged around for a while: putting away materials or tidying up the space a bit before getting rid of their boots and whatever they had been wearing that was too uncomfortable to sleep with.

Tech, on the other hand, wasn’t sleepy at all.

So he gathered a good portion of his spare parts pile and moved to the galley to tinker without bothering anyone until he tired himself out.

When the door hissed open the first thing he did was glance at his chrono, wondering if it was already breakfast time. It wasn’t. It was still early in the morning.

Tech raised his head, about to greet Crosshair or Hunter, whoever it was. He certainly wasn’t expecting Wrecker; the man slept like the dead.

He also wasn’t expecting Dani.

He _surely_ wasn’t expecting Dani to walk in: eyes closed and breaths deep and rhythmic, almost reaching a snore, drool glistening down a corner of her mouth _and the crystal Crosshair got her shining and floating in front of her_.

“Uh… Dani?”

No response, just a step forward.

Tech felt around the table for his helmet and dragged it closer to him, activating the camera and leaning back as the sleeping teen approached him only to face his scrap pile.

“Uhhhhh…”

The crystal shined brighter, bathing the galley in a deep blue light, and the scrap pile floated.

“Aw, _osik_!”, he flinched, and covered his head with his arms.

The fact that nothing exploded was a pleasant surprise.

So he uncurled slowly, and watched her for hours as random pieces tried (and often failed) to fit among each other.

The final product was about to be lowered to the floor, so he bent forwards to gently grab it, keeping his eyes on Ducky for any reactions. But she slumbered on: the unused materials were gently lowered to the ground, and the glow of the crystal was confined within—within—

The lightsaber.

At least that’s what he thought it was.

It was lumpy, and not specially aesthetically pleasing, but that was to expect considering the prime mater. There was what was clearly a switch on it.

“I—”

He looked up, but Dani was not there anymore.

He found her passed out on her bunk, drooling on the pillow, and after a moment of hesitation he stepped in to spread the blanket over her before heading out to the galley again.

He activated the switch.

Like every morning, Crosshair pushed the gonk droid so it would stand in front of Ducky’s door.

Like every morning, Wrecker stepped after him and pushed it away.

Like every morning, Dani headed to the refresher before going to the galley.

The giant blue glow-stick in Hunter’s hand was new, tho.

“WHAT THE—”, she choked.

The Bad Batchers turned to her, seeming as perplexed as her.

“Isn’t that one of the thingies Ventress had? Where did you get it?”, she asked warily.

“You made it. Tonight”, Tech stated.

“No I didn’t”, she frowned.

“I have a recording. Also, you won’t find that blue crystal of yours anywhere; because it’s in here”, he pointed at the handle in Hunter’s fist.

“No it isn’t.”

Hunter turned it off and popped a panel open, and there was the crystal.

“Okay. It is”, she admitted, face scrunching in confusion. “I made that?”, she pointed at it, tilting her head at Tech.

“Yup”, he turned his helmet to project the recording on the wall.

“Oh! Oh! That’s my favourite part!”, Wrecker exclaimed as the scrap started floating in the recording.

“I look fucking possessed”, Dani grimaced.

“Creepiest shit I have seen you do”, Crosshair nodded, a toothpick already in his mouth.

“But that means you can do it! You can lift things without them exploding!”, Wrecker redirected the conversation.

“I dunno, Wreck”, she shrugged with a dubious scowl. “I… I don’t remember this. I don’t know how to do it”, she shifted and eyed the lightsaber in Hunter’s hand warily.

He offered it to her, expression unreadable.

Her eyes darted to his, and she made no movement to take it.

“The person who made it is supposed to have it”, he explained, jerking his arm in insistence.

Ducky took it gingerly, turning the hilt around to take a good look at it, and finally did what they had hoped she wouldn’t do.

“NO!”, they shouted at the same time, Hunter and Crosshair diving to angle her hand away.

“You wouldn’t aim a blaster at your face, would you?”, the Sergeant scolded.

“…No”, she answered, irritated. She had only wanted to know what it looked like from above.

They stepped back.

Dani spread her arm out, eyeing everybody to make sure they were a safe distance away, and turned the switch on.

The sudden light startled her minutely, but she didn’t move at first. She glared at the deep blue colour before gently swinging her hand.

The humming only brought memories of red and Ventress.

She turned it off.

“I don’t like it”, she stated.

“We noticed”, Crosshair huffed. Her face had been an open book the whole time.

“It’s a useful weapon”, Hunter offered, voice unsettlingly neutral.

“I don’t know how to use it”, she insisted, tension crawling between them.

“We’ll figure it out. Can’t be much different from using a vibroblade.”

“But I don’t _want_ to use this, I want to use vibroblades, like you!”, Dani finally snapped.

“You _won’t_ turn down a fine weapon just because you have a whim on vibroblades!”

“Well, why don’t YOU keep it if it’s such a fine weapon?!”, she dared bite back.

“Let’s cool it”, Wrecker tried.

“Because I didn’t make it!”

“Well, I didn’t _want_ to make it!”

Hunter took a sharp inhale.

“Enough! GO TO YOUR ROOM!”

They all flinched, silence setting in the room until all they could hear was the hum of the engine.

The shock on Ducky’s face morphed into an angry scowl. She slammed the hilt against the floor and stalked out of the galley.

“…Dude”, Crosshair sighed. The Sergeant immediately turned to glare at him, lips pressed in a very much murderous expression. “Yes, yes, kill me with your eyes; whatever. But you _do_ realise you just grounded her for freaking out, right? You guys know I’m not one for sympathy, much less empathy, but…”, he shrugged. “Maybe waking up to find out you built the most lethal weapon in the galaxy and being pressured into using it is…”

“Distressing”, Tech provided carefully.

“I don’t—I wasn’t pressuring her!”, Hunter retorted.

Eyebrows were arched in response.

“She literally was just… giving her opinion on the ‘saber. And you went: ‘you’re going to use it and you’re going to like it’”, Wrecker smiled nervously.

“Lightsabers ARE a great weapon! And she can’t—This is just another proof that she’s a Jedi!”, he stressed, tone losing aggressivity until it was defeated. “She can’t just throw that away because she wants to…”, he choked up.

“To be like you?”, Tech completed.

The Sergeant sighed, long and tired.

A new silence stretched.

“Man, we could have coaxed her into it if you hadn’t gone full dad on her”, Crosshair muttered.

“She didn’t have breakfast”, Wrecker pointed out loudly, and all eyes shifted to stare at Hunter.

“I get it, I get it”, he appeased and moved to grab one of Crosshair’s pastries, but instead the sniper shoved her mug in his hands, already filled with warm milk and one of Hunter’s favourite cookies floating in it.

“Hey...!”, he complained half-heartedly.

“I know what I’m doing, _vod_ ”, he assured him, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around towards the door. “Now go apologise”, he shooed him.

The door closed behind him, and he was left alone in the corridor, a cold feeling settling on him, despite the warm mug in his hand.

His steps felt awkward as he walked towards Dani’s room. The trek, which couldn’t be more than ten steps, stretched for an eternity, and when he finally reached the door he just… stood there.

Which was frankly stupid, because Dani probably already knew he was standing there like an idiot. Should he even knock if she already knew he was there?

Hunter sighed yet again.

He knocked twice.

“Dani?”, he called, and got a sharp sniff for an answer. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. That wasn’t fair”. He waited a moment, and got no answer. “I brought you breakfast. Can I come in?”

“NO”, came the blunt answer, followed by another sniff. “I want to b-be alon-ne”, her voice wavered.

“Okay”, he shifted in place. “Okay. I’m placing it on the floor, alright? Eat, please”, he crouched down to do just that, the mug settling with a faint clink. “I’m sorry”, he said again, completely heartfelt, and returned to the galley.

“Well?”, Tech questioned him immediately.

“’Well’ what?”, the Sergeant muttered, moving to get himself a mug of caff.

“How did it go?”, Wrecker pressed.

“I apologised. She didn’t want to see me, though”, he tried to say it matter-of-factly, but it came out sullen.

Three heads swivelled in his direction.

“What? This mess is about pressure, isn’t it? I wasn’t going to force her to talk! Give me a break!”, and with that, he settled gruffly on the table.

Later, when they scattered to go about their day, there was a sheet lying in front of Ducky’s door:

_Thanks for breakfast. Sorry I yelled. Need a bit of time and space. See you for lunch,_

_-Ducky_

Dani tensed as the planet grew on the viewport.

“It’s fine”, Wrecker reassured her with a pat on the back that nearly send her face-first into the console board. “If you feel unwell we’ll just turn around!”

“I know, I know”, she said, anxiousness lacing her voice.

“Okay”, Crosshair muttered. “Entering atmo in 5… 4… 3… 2…”

“Oh, shit!”, Ducky closed her eyes tightly, face scrunching up in anticipation.

A few seconds of silence ticked by.

“I’m okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That trailer, hm. I'm itching to see what personailties they give the BB in canon, since we saw so little in tcw...  
> Anyways I will be over here, doing my thing. I was thinking to avoid Order 66 in this AU but that might change. I dunno, I'm still thinking about it.  
> Hate that they refuse to give Echo's melanin back. I propose a Day At The Beach episode to fix that
> 
> Happy Holidays to everybody!!!! :D


	19. SNAFU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I offer you... a mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know shit about planet's names, is it obvious?  
> They really just go from random planet to random planet

“Now you do it”, Hunter said, offering the hilt back to Dani and breaking them all from the haze they had fallen in as they watched him figure out the basics, mesmerized. “Don’t give me that pout. Just give it a try. Please”, he added.

She sighed and took it, standing up from where she had been sat on the ship’s stairs between Wrecker’s legs, and walked a bit away from the ship as she switched places with the Sergeant.

The hilt was unsettlingly light in her hand, almost toy-like. She was unused to it: the now taunt muscles of her arms swung it around as if it were nothing, and that left her feeling as if the deadly weapon would escape her grasp with any tiny distraction.

Ducky turned it on.

The deep blue light reminded her of home. It was a nice change, after months of grey being the predominant colour in her vision field. She swung it around a bit, leaning away from the strange sound it made. Still, she pressed her lips and went through the same moves Hunter had made.

When she was finally done, she turned it off and turned to the others.

“Don’t give me the kicked puppy look”, he pleaded. “Do you know how many people would think this is the coolest thing ever? And you just… don’t want it!”, he gestured in exasperation.

“It’s not that I don’t want it”, Dani said slowly, trying to avoid the escalation that had taken place some nights before. “It’s just—I—You have like, a ton of more years of experience than me! And you want _me_ to brandish the heat-of-doom?”, she managed to articulate, despite still feeling at a total loss with the subject.

“She’s got a point”, Wrecker chimed in, and Tech and Crosshair nodded along, turning to look at their Sergeant.

“I—“, he stuttered. “I can’t have it. It’s yours.”

“What if I want _you_ to have it until I actually know what am I doing with it?”, she insisted, walking up to them.

“Listen I—I don’t get why you don’t want it”, he admitted, borderline exasperated.

“I don’t like the noise”, she replied immediately.

“That’s not—”

“ _I don’t like the noise_ ”, she stressed, letting a slight hitch of panic lace her words.

The men hushed, bodies tensing to withdraw non-verbal communication.

“Alright. Go put that away”, Crosshair said, and stood up so she could enter the ship.

Dani zipped past him.

“Wha—“, Hunter started to ask.

“Vod”, the sniper said, and his tone shut him up. “She was the one to run in front of Ventress without knowing if she was going to get a rescue after you ate that flashbang.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So while Wrecker and Tech start phase I of the plan, why don’t you go and give her something to do that she’ll surely like. Something involving vibroblades”, he patted Hunter’s shoulder slowly and headed inside, too.

Tech and Wrecker, already wearing civvies, stood up on the dusty ground.

“We’ll keep in touch”, Tech said.

“Stay safe”, Hunter bid them farewell, and watched them walk to the door of the private landing patch they had managed to get.

“Dani?”, Crosshair was forced to call out loud when he failed to find her in the common areas and she didn’t answer when he knocked at her door, ruining his plan of opening conversation with a nonchalant ‘hey’.

“Over here!”, her voice came from the galley, _where he had totally already looked_.

He hurried back there, gaze sweeping all over the space and mouth pressed in a thin line.

“I have upset you. I can see it in your eyes.”

His stare snapped to the seat in the corner, making an approximation of the height her face must be at.

“Can I have the same courtesy?”, he sassed, blinking slowly.

Ducky slipped back into sight, posture relaxed where she sat with her phone in her hands and smug smile settled comfortably.

“So”, he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. “Hiding from Hunter?”

The smugness evaporated from her frame as she turned her gaze back to the screen.

“Perhaps”, she deadpanned.

Crosshair was ready to hold an uncomfortable amount of seconds in silence before pushing a bit more on the subject. He watched her subconsciously held herself very still.

“The hum reminds you of Ventress.”

It wasn’t a question.

“It can’t hurt you if you’re holding it.”

Her lips twitched, her eyes narrowed minutely, tension coiled around her shoulders, but she stubbornly didn’t look at him.

“Hey”, he called, and not even abrasively. Her eyes finally snapped to his. He took a slow, deep breath. “If you want to talk about it you know where to find us.”

Ducky’s phone fell from her grasp, mouth slightly agape before she snorted loudly; so much that something fell from her lap and rolled on the floor.

“Dude it totally looked like saying that took 10 years off your life-span!”, she snickered, but ducked her head in shame when Crosshair hardened his gaze. “Huh. Sorry. I… I appreciate it.”

“Hm”, he kinda accepted the apology, and knelt down to pick up whatever she had dropped. “…I thought I told you to put this away”, he shook the lightsaber in his fist faintly.

“Uh, yeah, I just—I was trying to see if I could pluck the crystal out.”

“What for?”, he handed it back to her.

“Uhm, well; because you got it for me”, Dani said as if it were obvious.

It wasn’t for Crosshair, but she didn’t seem to notice as she popped the panel open again and tried to tug the crystal out.

“And after all the trouble you went through to get it and how much I love just looking at it it would be a shame if it ended up stuck in here forever…”

She pulled more forcefully, but it didn’t seem to want to give.

“I’m not being very successful, tho”, she lamented, and raised her eyes to look at the sniper when he failed to voice a retort or a sassy remark. “Cross?”

He shook his head to focus.

“Listen. Leave the crystal there for the moment. You don’t want to use the ‘saber in battle? That’s fine. But at least keep it with you, in account that it can cut almost everything and that makes it a useful tool.”

“Bu—”

“We can bully Hunter into carrying it later. Let’s try this out first, alright?”, he offered with a slight grimace.

“…Alright”, she sighed, looking between uncomfortable and crestfallen.

“Now”, he clapped his hands, effectively catching her attention. “ _You_ have managed to make the Sarge feel guilty, which means he will be indulgent towards you, so you can get something from him. Don’t overdo it, brat”, he added as a warning, making a ‘V’ with his fingers and pointing them from his eyes to hers.

That got a quiet snort out of her, so mission accomplished.

“And no cloaking in the ship!”, he called over his shoulder as he left.

Ducky rolled her eyes and pocketed the hilt to scroll through her phone.

She still tensed a bit when she noticed Hunter’s Force-signature approaching, but made an effort to not cloak herself.

It would take her nowhere and Cross had already scolded her.

“Hey”, he greeted awkwardly.

“Hey”, she did her part of the peace offering.

“Want me to tech you to sharpen vibroblades?”

“HELL YEAH.”

Wrecker kicked the pavement absentmindedly.

“Huh. A non-dusty town. Now that’s a novelty.”

Tech snorted faintly, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath.

“With all the money the local government does selling weapons to the Separatists, it better take care of its inhabitants to keep them from rioting”, he mused, wary of people listening in.

“’M not seeing any battle droids”, the taller man reported from his vantage point.

Indeed: the town seemed busy but peaceful, no visible guards or patrols. People went on about their lives undisturbed.

“They’d be stationed at the weapons’ warehouse. No sense in having them around town when the locals are willingly working with them.”

That left a strange aftertaste on his tongue. The thought of people actually wanting to work with the clankers made his skin prickle, and he was pretty sure it was the same with his brothers. Seeing this town, watching all these civilians walking calmly under the sun and talking amicably while indirectly participating in the slaughter of their brothers in the battlefield made him anxious.

The Bad Batch might have never been on good terms with the regular clones, but that didn’t mean they wished them the kind of suffering the frontlines brought.

Wrecker elbowed his side lightly, wrenching him out of his thoughts. When Tech looked up, he found his brother staring at something very intently before his eyes lazily slid to something mundane.

Checking it out, Tech spotted a fairly big truck: workers hopping into the back of it.

“You think that’s it?”

“Checks out with the intel”, Wrecker shrugged.

Ah, yes, the intel.

The intel that said that there was a continuous supply of Separatist weapons coming out of this planet: whether it was from a factory or large-scale storing, they didn’t know; but what they DID know was that the workers were taken there and brought with land trucks.

That intel.

“They’re leaving”, Wrecker nudged him again, nervousness slipping past his clenched teeth.

“Just wait here”, Tech replied, and walked nonchalantly to the other side of the street, leaning on a street lamp as if he were adjusting his boots.

When the truck drove by, he threw the locator with a flick of his wrist, attaching it to the vehicle.

“That was a very Cross move”, Wrecker teased when the slicer walked back to him.

“Not a word”, Tech elbowed, already heading for the ship.

“Auch!”

“Did you burn yourself?”, Hunter called, leaning back from where he had been preparing a light pre-mission meal.

“Noph!”, came the muffled reply.

With a glance he checked that it was safe to leave the food unattended for a moment, and then he strode quickly to where he had left her sitting with the weapons. Despite having overseen her first clumsy slides of the sharpener and carefully correcting her until he was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be an impromptu dismemberment, on top of leaving a warning; it seemed like an accident couldn’t be helped.

He found Dani sucking at her finger, looking annoyed but fine.

“Cut or burn?”, he held out his hand, expecting her to show him the injury.

“Bughn”, she replied, and actually made the move to pull the finger out of her mouth, but aborted it.

“Go wash it with water. I’ll grab some cream and a plaster”, he tugged her gently to set her in movement and went to grab his own supplies.

She was way more pliant after the burn cooled off a bit. The skin had reddened and it was starting to swell with a blister. He let her smear the cream on the wound herself, and then he applied the plaster.

“There”, he said redundantly, but feeling oddly satisfied about it.

“Thanks”, Ducky chirped, and went back to work.

“And watch your fingers.”

“Yeah, yeah”, she dismissed him lightly. “Shouldn’t you be watching the food?”

That got the Sergeant to leave in a rush.

She snickered to herself and focused back on her work, determined to not let the sharpener slip again.

“What’s so funny?”, Tech’s voice startled her as he and Wrecker walked in.

“Fuck!”, she swore, limbs jerking before she placed all sharp tools back on the table.

“Language!”, Hunter called from far away.

“They startled me!”, she yelled back.

“They’re back already?”

“Yep!”, Wrecker answered, moving along.

Tech eyed the tools spread around the table, carefully pushed them aside and settled down with one of his heavy-duty devices.

“You got it?”, she asked him.

“We hope”, he tapped at the screen quickly and set it flat on the surface, a projection lightning up. “They are fairly away from the town already”, he mused.

“Which makes sense in case there’s an accident or they need to keep a minimum of confidentiality”, Hunter walked back into the room and squinted at the holo, drying his hands on a rag.

Dani hummed noncommittally and grabbed the sharpener again, determined to get the job done.

“No, put those away”, the Sergeant stopped her, and she froze, feeling like screaming. “Set the table, we’re leaving as soon as we’re done eating.”

“Bu—”

Crosshair appeared and set the dishes beside her, so she swallowed her scream and instead huffed loudly, sheathing the blades and pushing them out of the way before distributing plates and glasses.

Everything became confusing for a moment as they bustled around: bringing the food or still clicking pieces of their armour on or just slipping uncomfortably between the table and those already sitting to get to their seat.

Ducky scowled at the blob of protein paste smacked against her plate, but she knew the drill already: they couldn’t set enough money aside to _always_ have decent food, nor the proper space to store it to last long. Either way, it was preferable to eat the provided food before a mission: that way they were sure no digestion trouble would arise.

Wrecker, bless his soul, slid a couple sauce bottles in her range.

They watched the display as they ate. The truck still moved for a while before finally stopping.

“How long have they been on the move?”, Hunter questioned.

“Left town about half an hour ago”, Wrecker answered.

“It will take us a couple hours on foot from here, probably”, Tech estimated.

“And we’re sure that’s the right place?”, Dani pointed at the blinking dot with her fork, not looking forward to go for a four-hour hike only to find a farm instead of a factory or deposit.

“You know, recon is part of the job”, Crosshair sassed.

She pressed her lips, not really able to argue that, but then an idea occurred her.

“Oh! If we’re just doing recon then I could Force-run there and be back in less tha—”

“No”, Hunter cut her.

“Why not?”, she demanded, setting the fork down and crossing her arms angrily.

“Because you have never done recon before, much less alone”, the Sergeant nodded slowly.

“…Get out of here with your facts”, she pouted and went back to pick at her food, being the only thing she could do to save face. It still warranted snickers and huffed laughs from her teammates.

Actually, the hiking part wasn’t even bad.

Until they reached the swamp; boots sinking into the mud even before they reached the main body of water. That wasn’t too bad either: the others soldiered on and so did Ducky.

The high levels of humidity of swamps translated to high richness in species, which translated to high alertness on the girl’s behalf; so the others didn’t call her out on it: she might as well spot a shiny bug as a potential danger.

No: the messy part was when the mass of water laid in their path and it stretched to the sides as far as their sight could go.

The truck _surely_ had travelled through solid ground, but they had been approaching on foot on a totally different angle. Also, walking down the road would expose them.

“Dibs on the first shower when we get back”, Crosshair said.

“Second”, Tech was quick on his feet.

“Third”, Hunter followed.

“Fourth!”, Wrecker jumped.

Dani stood still for a second more.

“…We’re really gonna dip ourselves there, huh.”

“Come on, it’s shallower around here”, Hunter guided them to a side.

She distantly wondered with what sense he knew that, since the surface was absolutely covered with algae and water plants and the sparse patches of water she could see were muddy as fuck.

A compulsory Force-sweep revealed that there wasn’t anything worryingly big beneath the waters, so that was a win.

“You don’t want to get dirty, Lady?”, Cross teased.

“Hey! That’s a Wrecker-only nickname!”

“Hell yeah!”

“Whatever, brat”, the sniper scoffed, turning away.

“There we go”, Dani cooed.

He turned his head back to presumably glare at her; not that it had much effect through two helmets.

Still, she stood to a side as the others carefully descended into the water: weapons and sensitive backpacks held high.

“You coming?”, Wrecker dared amicably.

Now certain that that wasn’t a very elaborated prank, Dani had no choice but to follow them.

She let out a resigned sigh and held her blaster and lightsaber high before sliding into the water, yelping when it sloshed at the height of her ribs.

Hunter, who had already crossed and was grabbing Tech’s backpack from him, looked up immediately; but Ducky kept moving and the slicer cleared his throat to reclaim his attention.

“Oh. Sorry”, he muttered, offering a hand to pull him out.

And then came Crosshair, throwing his rifle overhead to the safety of the solid ground before accepting Hunter’s hand.

The Sergeant offered the same courtesy to Wrecker, even though they all knew that if he had leaned all his weight on the leaner man he would have ended up in the water again.

Dani staggered.

“Aw, shit!”, she wiggled in place. “One sec, I’m stuck”, she grumbled, trying to tug free from the mud that was keeping her foot captive. A compulsory Force-sweep brought the delightful knowledge that there were things crawling around her. “Ew ew there’s things coming towards me!”, she stressed.

“I thought you liked critters”, Cross huffed.

“Not if I can’t see them!”, she cried, and staggered again when her foot was released with a squelch.

Before she could even regain balance, Wrecker was lifting her out of the water by the scruff of her undersuit, plopping her on the ground with them.

She looked down at her filth-covered self.

“…You made me paint my armour for this?!”

The rest of the way was on blissful solid ground and uneventful. They mostly minded their own business until Hunter signalled them to attention.

“Tech, scopes”, he said, holding a hand out.

He dutifully passed them to their leader.

“Ducky”, the Sergeant then called, and tossed them to her.

She fumbled to catch them, managing an awkward grip, but at least she hadn’t dropped it so it could have been worse.

“What?”, she questioned.

She was already familiar with the scopes: it was common equipment and one of the first things she had been allowed to touch once onboard.

“Well, you wanted to learn to scout, didn’t you? Let’s go”, he shrugged, and started to walk up the hill that raised before them.

“Oh! Uh…”, she startled, and hurried to follow after him.

The other three Batchers watched them climb up and then crawl up, at Hunter’s signal.

“A ducky, indeed”, Crosshair hummed, amused.

“We’re really training a cadet in the field, huh”, a hint of nervousness laced Tech’s words.

“I’d say we’re doing fine”, Wrecker shrugged.

“Look, look, I can even picture what they’re saying: ‘Patience is the most important virtue for reconnaissance’”, Crosshair said in a gruffy voice. “’You want to gather as much intel as you can’. ‘Gotcha!’”, he added in an overly-excited tone.

“Nerd”, Tech snorted.

“Just acting out their father-daughter bonding moment to kill time, that’s all”, he dismissed. “If recon already takes an ungodly long time imagine doing recon AND teaching someone to do recon from _zero_ ”, he made to slide a hand down his face, but his helmet was on the way.

“Hey, man, cut it with the father teasing”, Tech nudged with an elbow.

“Why? It’s true!”, he gestured at their figures up in the hill.

“You don’t get to tease him too much: we all know you stole that crystal for her”, Wrecker poked him with the butt of his blaster.

“Bu— That’s different! I thought she was leaving, and now she’s staying and I look like an idiot!”

“Awwww”, the tank cooed.

That earned him a jab with the butt of Cross’ rifle.

“What I meant”, Tech said pointedly. “Is that Dani’s father is presumed dead. You already threw that on her face, now don’t go around suggesting a replacement!”, he bit out.

“Hey, hey, I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just saying what I see!”, he shifted defensively.

“Well then, shut it unless it’s clear she’s okay with it!”

“And how I’m supposed to know that?!”

“Ask her?”, Wrecker shrugged.

“No”, was Crosshair’s immediate answer.

“Then shut it”, Tech insisted.

“Don’t tell me to shut it.”

“Will it kill you to accept that you’re wrong, Cross? Are you allergic to apologies? Would you choke on them?”, the slicer mocked.

“GUYS”, Wrecker thundered.

It wasn’t a close thunder, but a distant one. He hadn’t even raised his voice. It had been a low, deep growl that had made them click their jaws shut and freeze.

“Whatever”, the sniper snapped out of it first, and shouldered his rifle. “I’m going up there, see if I can speed that up a little”, he huffed.

Tech bristled, but sat down and aggressively scrolled through scans and reports.

“Do you… want to talk about it?”, Wrecker sighed.

“No.”

He looked up to watch the lazily drifting clouds to pass the time.

It was confirmed: the building ahead of them was a weapons deposit.

“Quite a few patrols, but with enough time between them that if we hurry we should be able to sneak through”, Dani reported.

“A couple platoons, that I saw”, Crosshair specified, chewing on a toothpick, “I would guess there’s the same number posted inside, to play it safe.”

“Seems to be a singular building”, Hunter added. “With some sort of rack aside for the workers.”

“If it’s just a deposit, what are the workers doing here?”, Wrecker questioned slowly.

“Maintenance? Accounting?”, Tech shrugged.

An uneasy silence settled among them.

“It IS a significant unknown factor”, the slicer pointed out.

“And that’s why I want your guards high”, Hunter checked his ammo and clicked it back in place. “Dani, I want you to keep an eye out for sentient activity.”

“Yessir!”, she snapped a rigid salute, contrasting with her light tone.

“Prepare and rest. We move at sundown.”

From his position ahead, Hunter signed them to advance.

Ducky was with him in one measured Force-step, quick as an arrow, and settled next to Tech, giving room for Crosshair’s arrival.

The Sergeant snapped an alarmed sign of “halt”, and Wrecker ducked back behind his cover.

A patrol of five battle droids marched past them.

He signed that it was safe, and Wrecker didn’t waste time to rendezvous with them.

“Aw, man, I _hate_ stealth! This is taking so long!”, he complained loudly.

“I _love_ stealth”, Ducky countered. “I love not being shot at!”

“Then you’re in for a bad time with us”, Crosshair chuckled.

“For you, guys: I’ll cope”, she cooed sweetly.

“Ducky”, Hunter nudged her with an elbow.

“All living beings are still in the adjacent building”, she reported after checking.

And with only a moment to look around, the Sergeant was off again.

They kept zig-zagging among crates until they reached a decently sheltered space.

“You’re taking your time today”, Crosshair mussed. “For having been typing since we got in range…”

“Oh, are you volunteering to do the hacking next time?”, Tech nagged back, and pointedly pressed a key without looking at his wristcomm. A projection powered up, presumably showing the feed of different security cameras. “Because there’s a reason why the friendly competition is about shooting clankers and not hacking into systems.”

“Don’t let it go to your head”, the sniper scoffed, and the others just rolled their eyes at him under their helmets, because there was no way to save face with that.

Wrecker turned to the projection.

“Stealth’s over, then?”, he asked, hopeful.

“Stealth’s over”, Hunter nodded solemnly.

“WAIT WAIT, WHY?”, Dani jumped.

“There’s cameras inside”, Wrecker pointed at the projection.

“So once we go in they’ll know we’re here, so there’s no point on being sneaky anymore”, Tech clarified.

“But we could still—“, she tried.

“You got a route?”, the Sergeant asked him.

“Does Cross chew on toothpicks because he has a nervous tic?”, Tech countered.

“Why am I being attacked?”

“Why am I being ignored?”, Ducky called, notably pissed off.

“You aren’t being ignored”, Hunter turned to her. “We know what we’re doing, okay? Stick with us. Wrecker, you’re on Ducky Duty.”

“Copy!”, he piped up cheerfully.

“Bruh…”, she gave Hunter a flat look, but, again; it didn’t have much of an effect when they were both wearing helmets.

“Shoot down whoever comes in our way; we’ll find the biggest artillery and set the charges there, then we’re out. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Copy.”

“Yeah!”

Dani let out an annoyed huff and made a gesture of acknowledgement so they wouldn’t bugger her about it.

“We’re going in through the windows”, the Sergeant announced.

The others cheered over the shattering of the glass.

Okay, Dani cheered too, despite wanting to keep on being angry.

Blaster fire started ringing as they hurried to shoot at the unaware droids.

They had trained and worked together for some time, now; but Ducky still had to make an effort to focus on her targets and not just… stare.

The Bad Batch was truly a sight to behold.

They ducked, shot, and advanced in synchrony: effortlessly manoeuvring around each other, never disturbing their teammate’s movements.

Dani was well aware that, should she try to merge with them at the moment, it would be a disaster.

But she yearned. Oh, she yearned; not to just fight with the Batch, but _be_ part of the Batch.

And yet she wasn’t ready for that.

At the moment, she would be more useful on her own.

As a satellite of sorts.

“Scatter!”, Hunter ordered when the noise of metal feet arose from beyond the rows of shelves that littered the building, threatening to surround them.

Wrecker lightly nudged her shoulder and pointed at their right with his head. Ducky nodded at him and quickly got to her position behind him: safe from the main line of fire.

Or at least that was the idea: with so many shelves creating narrow corridors, it was easy to be out-flanked. Dani picked up on Wrecker’s uneasiness and hurried to shoot down any droids coming from their sides so she could reinforce him again.

“Ammo!”, he called, and she pulled a hand away from her blaster to slap a key on the tank’s backpack, which dropped a power pack on its dispenser.

“Thanks!”, he said in a rough whisper, clicking out his empty pack and slamming the new one in place.

Guilt over what she was about to do gnawed at her.

She decided to stay put for the moment. There would probably be other occasions to try things out…

She collided against Wrecker’s back, staggering a bit before regaining her bearings and peeking out on the reason why they had stopped their advance.

The space in front of them was packed with more robust droids.

“What are those?”

“B2s!”, he replied through clenched teeth.

“Ah, there’s more than one model”, she commented soullessly, hooking an arm around Wrecker’s elbow to nudge him into a different row of shelves and some semblance of cover.

“Watch out for those wrist-rockets!”, Tech called through the comms.

Ducky froze for a moment, helmet facing straight forwards as she brought her wristcomm closer to her mouth.

“The _what_.”

A mini-missile wheezed close by, and then the corridor where they had been just a moment ago exploded.

It was underwhelming, compared to the complex-blowing kind of explosions that she had gotten used to since she tagged with the Batch, but it was startling that the droids could pull that out at any moment.

“ _PAKSHET_!”

Wrecker’s head whipped towards her in interest.

“That’s a new one!”

And went back to blasting droids.

“Uuuuhh… yeah”, Dani ran away for a moment to check the intersections of the row, only to hiss and cloak herself when she saw droids coming from two of the three branches. “Wreck, it’s packed here!”

“Here too!”, he called, business returning to his voice. “Get back here, we’ll blast our way forw—”

“I’m going to circle around them!”, she blurted quickly. “Be right back!”

She ran off before she could hear his reply, too worried that she would change her mind.

She just—

She just wanted to know what it was like on her own.

Ducky shot at the droids threatening to get the drop on her friend as she skidded to the free corridor, head tilted to her right to catch the moment where she would be behind the group of droids headed for Wrecker.

Tech crossed her path in a dash, but he was gone before she could even try to dodge him, so she carried on, taking a turn.

She held tightly onto her blaster with one hand, the other going to grab for her vibroblade to cause even more damage, when it brushed over something else.

And yeah: she wanted to use it _so badly_ —

But Dani considered herself a pragmatic person.

The lightsaber ignited as she swept it across the droids’ waists, cutting through metal as if it were mere air as she shot at the collapsed heads to play it safe before taking a step forwards and another devastating swipe.

It was inelegant, unskilled.

It was _exhilarating_.

“Whoo!”, she cheered when the threatening bulk of enemies was reduced and Wrecker was able to pick the stragglers off effortlessly, allowing him to see her.

He let out a loud relieved sigh.

“Go set the charges! I’ll reinforce the others!”, she chirped in her euphoria, and zoomed away.

“Lady! We’re supposed to stick together!”, he groaned, but she was already out of sight.

But she would be fine. The kid was invisible and now she had a lightsaber, so…

Damn. That thought was kind of terrifying.

Well. He might as well do his job.

The shot was clear. The droids lined up. The angle perfectly calculated for maximum efficiency.

Crosshair pulled the trigger.

Three of the droids clustered by an intersection spontaneously dropped in halves.

The blaster bolt hit the ground instead of the intended target, and he was forced to shoot two times more to down the droids that had been behind them.

“Don’t shoot me”, Dani’s voice warned, and then he saw her head peeking out of the corner.

“Did you just steal my kill?!”, he scowled.

“…Perhaps”, was all she offered before cloaking herself again and running off, swiftly escaping the end of his rifle’s barrel.

“Just wait for Hunter to see that you’re swinging the ‘saber around like a new toy!”, he called after her.

He didn’t need to follow up with the threat. She could picture it and dreaded it but also didn’t really care.

“ _Dank farrik_!”, the Sergeant yelped when two droids were decapitated. He huffed and busied himself with stabbing through the power pack of another droid. “So, how’s your new weapon?”

She could feel the smirk in his voice.

“It’s so effortlessly to maim and kill that I already fear myself. I’m high and I love it and I’m aware that it’s not okay!”, Dani laughed nervously.

Hunter did not immediately know how to respond to that, so instead he decapitated his own droid. Several options flickered through his mind, some with worse outcomes than others. The struggle was real, and very similar to the one he faced daily as a leader, if not the same.

“Do you… want me to hold it for now?”, he finally offered.

Was it hypocritical of him to ask that after grounding her for not wanting to do what she was doing now? Would she be angry because of that? Would she run off without a word? Would she lash at him?

All these things he had considered, and in the end he had no choice but to bet.

He watched Ducky tense up for a moment, movements jerky, and then the lightsaber was turned off and pushed gently into his offered hand.

“…Yeah”, she croaked, and then she cleared her throat. “I was going to reinforce Tech?”

“I’m fine”, he spoke over the comms, watching the long row littered with scraps with pride.

Hunter tucked the hilt in his backpack.

“I paired you with Wrecker”, the Sergeant said pointedly.

“Going”, she chirped, and ran off.

“Cross?”, he asked over the comms.

“Picking off stragglers here, Sarge”, the sniper reported.

“Tech?”

“Cameras don’t show any bulk of reinforcements that would be worrying.”

“Rendezvous at Wrecker’s position”, he ordered, rolling his shoulders.

He was forgetting something.

That feeling nagged at him, but he couldn’t place it as he moved among the rows.

Alert, but somehow, not enough.

The feeling only grew when he left the cover of the shelves. Ahead of him, Dani was standing next to Wrecker, chatting lightly as he knelt down to set the charges on the crates set apart from the others. Behind them, a great expanse of empty space and, beyond, a great door.

There was a threat at the edge of his awareness, making Hunter’s skin prickle.

But what? What was it? It couldn’t be the droids, they were all turned to shreds on the floor, and Tech would alert them if reinforcement were coming, so _what was it?_ What could it possibly be, when here there were only—

–living beings.

“DUCKY!”, he bellowed, startling everybody to attention. “SWEEP!”

He saw her jerk straighter, heard her harsh, dry gasp as she started turning to the door.

And then it slid open in a blink, as if it had been held closed with great pressure, and the workers that had climbed up on the truck that morning were there, all armed with unfamiliar weapons—

But no matter the fancy looks, the commandos could recognise a portable missile launcher when they saw one.

So. The workers were testers.

They could do nothing to prevent them from firing it: only watch as it headed for Dani.

“NO!”, he heard somebody scream.

It could have been him. Or not. It could have been all of them.

She was frozen in place, and Hunter hated it when his brain provided him that that was good. That if she took the shell, the missile wouldn’t hit the dangerous artillery and charges: that she would die but they would have a chance to live and complete their mission.

Everything was happening too fast, too slow, and he didn’t even know if it was because of his heightened senses or this was just how it was for everyone.

But how cruel it must be if it was like that. How—

Wrecker lurched to his feet. He looped an arm around Dani’s waist.

And swung them around.

Dani screamed in terror and horror as the heat licked at her neck and shoulders, despite the protection that Wrecker offered, curled up around her and holding her tight against his chest without actually crushing her.

And god: if she was already in pain, how was Wrecker, who had actually been _hit_?

There was an horrible moment of stillness as the noise and flames died out, and then Ducky broke it taking a shaky breath.

“Wre—?”

“Run”, he grunted, low, pained.

And pushed her away.

Maybe it was the Force. Maybe it was plain old adrenaline. But her arm snapped back even as he pushed her, and he yanked at his wrist as she clasped it and took him with her.

She clung to him for dear life and ran for the others, for the safety of the shelves and the broken windows beyond. She ran through the cover fire the others were laying, moving with such ease that she had to turn and make sure that Wrecker was still there, that she wasn’t just dragging a gauntlet or—or an arm along—

But Wrecker was there, _somehow_ keeping up with her, his other hand curled around a detonator.

She was mildly aware that there was an explosion; sometime after they jumped out the window, sometime after they ran and ran and ran, but they continued running long after that. She was breathing too hard to hear the others, too busy running.

Too scared to stop.

Nobody thought twice when they had to jump into the now black water of the swamp. They waddled through it as fast as they could and scrambled out of it, with the promise of the ship, of safety being nearby. They all paused to help pull Wrecker out of the water, and when she lingered to check on him he pushed her forwards, only giving her the chance to let out a sound.

“Go”, he grumbled.

And they kept running.

He was angry.

Of course he was angry: she had failed to do her job. She had gotten too excited over moving freely and haven’t done the gig that only she could do. Dani betted the others were angry too. They were going to yell at her, and hate her, and maybe even kick her out or she would leave on her own because if they shunned her she wouldn’t be able to stand it—

The noise of the _Havoc Marauder_ ’s stairs deploying startled her out of her thoughts.

Tech rushed in first, followed closely by Crosshair and Hunter.

Wrecker was still behind her, so she went to climb up.

She had to apologise now. She had to show that she was sorry, and maybe they wouldn’t be too angry.

With that idea, she turned to face Wrecker, who was now standing at the doorframe.

“Wreck—”

He set his heavy hands on her shoulders, starling her into silence.

“Are you okay?”, he croaked.

Her nape and shoulders felt raw and squelchy, and she was pretty sure that she was visibly shaking and she didn’t know how she had managed to run all the way back without suffocating, didn’t even know how she was breathing right now, really; but that didn’t matter now.

“Yes”, she breathed out.

And before Dani could manage anything else he sagged, knees buckling, and all his weight went down on her. Ducky scrambled to catch him, but the angle was awkward and he took her down with her, effectively pinning her hips down as they lied there, on the corridor.

“HUNTER!”, she shouted, panic making her voice tremble. “TECH! CROSS!”

She hadn’t finished calling out and they were already barrelling towards them.

“Shit”, she heard Crosshair swear profusely.

Tech and Hunter hurried to grab Wrecker under his armpits and lift him up. Ducky shakily scrambled out from under him, breath hitching as panic overtook her.

“—to the medbay—”

“No: it’ll be easier to lift him into his bunk”, she distantly heard Tech argue. “Cross, grab the bacta, I left it on the table—”

And there was movement around her.

She wanted to follow Wrecker, but her nape hurt and her chest hurt and her head hurt and her hands and legs kept _quaking_. She tried to get up a couple times, but she just couldn’t manage it.

There were hand on her shoulders again, but this time they were Crosshair’s. He didn’t have any bacta with him.

“Go shower”, he told her.

She tried to reply. She really did.

“We’re helping Wrecker already. But you’re hurt too. A shower helps, I promise. Then you eat, and after that you can see him. Alright?”

Ducky managed to bob her head twice to convey that she understood.

And he guided her through the motions: helped her remove her armour, stayed with her when the clean water stung at her wounds, applied the bacta patches and offered her soft pyjamas to replace her undersuit, took her to the galley and gave her soup until she almost retched, and finally carried her to their sleeping-area when she didn’t have energy left for anything else.

Tech had just come back from his own shower and replaced Hunter at monitoring Wrecker’s vitals.

The man was lying on his stomach, his upper back covered with bacta patches and bandages, all of them stained with blood and whatever antiseptic they had managed to throw at him, apparently.

Tech caught her staring at the mess.

“The swamp water… didn’t do any favours”, he put mildly.

Crosshair threw a pillow on the ground next to Wrecker’s bunk and lowered her there.

“Her burns?”, Hunter asked him.

“Painful, but not threatening”, he informed them lowly.

Dani reached out, hand resting on Wrecker’s cheek.

But he didn’t stir.

 _I’m sorry_ , she couldn’t manage to get out.

She scooted a bit closer and raised her other arm, snaking it around his head in her best attempt at a hug.

Ducky drifted off there, lulled by the exhaustion and the other’s low conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hurt the teddy bear  
> I know, I know


	20. When You Wish Upon A Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wrecker is okay, I promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Letting you all know that this AU is now my fic with the most hits, kudos and subscriptions! Thanks for your support! :D

Someone touched a very particular spot on her shoulder: a small patch that had been spared from the scorching heat and, therefore, didn’t need to be covered with bacta.

“Hm?”, she mused, irritation reverberating in the simple sound.

“You’re going to get _horrible_ kinks on top of what you already have.”

“Hmmm”, she tightened her hold on Wrecker.

“I have to change your patches”, Crosshair insisted, poking her on the same spot.

“Uuuuurrghhhh…”, she huffed, turning her face away.

“Don’t make me wake Wrecker up”, he threatened.

And it worked.

The girl carefully lifted her arms from where they touched the injured commando and straightened, blinking up at Crosshair through heavy eyelids.

The sniper offered an arm wordlessly. Dani reached up for it—

—and missed.

He quickly leaned down further to steady her shoulders.

“What is it?”, he asked, low and sharp, eyes flying over her face to try and catch anything that could give him a clue.

“I’m—I’m _very_ tired…”, she sighed, swaying a little.

Crosshair breathed out quietly in relief.

“Yeah. Sometimes it hits you a while later.”

He pulled back from her to look around the space. Tech was piloting them to the neighbouring system, and Hunter was catching some shuteye that Cross wasn’t going to disturb when it had taken them ten minutes to convince him to settle down. He eyed Tech’s free bunk.

“Okay, come here”, he knelt down and reached around her, mindful of the hidden burns and blisters, and lifted her up, having her almost sit on his arms.

His muscles might not have been anything to write home about, but he was perfectly capable of carrying a teenager to a bed less than two meters away. Ducky made a startled sound and tried to hold tighter to him, but by the time she found leverage Crosshair was already sitting her down, placing a hand over her head so she wouldn’t bump it with Hunter’s bunk and guiding her down to lie on her stomach.

It stung when he peeled away the old patches, but having them replaced was so soothing that she fell asleep.

“I’m fiiiine!”, the slurred whine woke her up with a startle.

Dani raised her head a little, blinking at her surroundings. Tech was physically holding Wrecker down onto the bunk, and Hunter was already heading over to help. Above them, Crosshair turned to face the wall and covered his head with a pillow.

“You’re not ‘fine’, so stay still or Force help me I _will_ sedate you!”

Wrecker scoffed and slumped down, eyes drifting until they found Dani’s.

“Lady!”, he greeted, a smile twitching on his tired face.

“Hey”, she sent a sad smile back.

Since Wrecker wasn’t actively trying to escape Tech, Hunter went to crouch next to her.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sticky”, she grimaced, pulling herself up to carefully slide out of the bunk.

There was a certain stiffness, but yeah; the main feeling was sticky.

Tech let out a surprised but pleased hum from the other side of the room. “This… is looking better than I hoped.”

Hunter left Ducky sipping on water and walked back to inspect Wrecker’s wound. Crosshair perked up from where he had almost fallen asleep and rolled to peek down.

His armour had most certainly saved the tank’s life. It was a miracle that his arm hadn’t been blown off at the shoulder. The small missile had ripped his flesh as it shattered with the explosion, and the heat had reached deep; stopping any bleeding but leaving a blackened hole. The skin around it sported different degrees of burnings, but the bacta had already gotten rid of the lesser ones. They had feared the worse when they realised they had to cross the swamp water again: Force knew what nasty bugs were swimming in that, and so when they patched him up they had to hope that bacta’s antiseptic effect would be enough.

Still, they could be hopeful and realists at the same time.

They had braced themselves for inflammation, suppuration, maybe even have to physically extract maggots.

The wound _was_ reddened and hot, but it was… clean.

“Huh”, the Sergeant eloquently said.

Crosshair rolled back onto the bed and settled.

“So I can get up?”, Wrecker asked hopefully.

“Good try, but no”, Tech deadpanned, unpacking the new patch.

“But Ducky’s up!”, he still complained, even though his voice was slurring again.

“Ducky didn’t get a direct hit from a portable missile”, he reminded him.

Dani grimaced, looking away.

By the time he finished tapping down the new wound dressing, Wrecker was asleep again.

An alien silence had invaded the ship.

It made the day insufferably long as Wrecker slumbered on.

It had always been hard when he was hurt: he was the most talkative, the one that would appear out of nowhere and pat you so hard on the back that you would trip against the wall—

With him out of commission, that lacked.

And it was missed.

Crosshair had hoped that would change with Dani around.

Crosshair _wondered_ why that didn’t seem to change with Dani around.

What was with her? She was well enough to walk around, so she was also well enough to do small talk.

But every time they attempted to engage with her, she ducked her head and barely participated in the conversation.

He could swear he had caught a glint of fear in her eyes.

“Hey, brat”, he intercepted her when she left the refresher. She tensed as she turned to him, eyes wide. He didn’t visibly react to it. “Time to change your dressings.”

She relaxed again and sat on the closed lid of the toilet, her back to him.

Her burns had been way less severe: only a few spots had blackened, but second-degree burns were still a bother. An easily treated bother; and so Crosshair was glad to see that most blisters had already faded away. He carefully tapped down the patch. They hadn’t said a word to each other, but before Ducky could get up and leave, he sunk his fingers in the hair of her nape.

“You’re undercut is not so undercut anymore.”

She turned to look at herself in the mirror, tilting her head around a bit to see the different angles, and finally raised a hand to brush it through the shorter, yet already curling hair.

“Yeah.”

“Want a cut?”

“…Won’t it be… fucking hell if I get hair on my burns?”, she asked slowly.

“Hey, I covered it well”, he replied, but still reached for a towel to drape it over her shoulders. “There.”

Dani gave a sort of accepting shrug, so Crosshair retrieved the razor machine and scissors.

“Same as always?”

“Same as always”, she nodded.

The razor machine buzzed to life, and then it was gliding over her nape. The feeling of the hair being sheared felt refreshing, and she let out a content sigh. Sadly, that part was over quickly, and then Crosshair was combing the remaining mat of hair to cut three fingers of length.

She already had several haircuts on-board the _Havoc Marauder_ : Hunter had been the first to offer when she started to look uncomfortable with the growing length of her hair, but after that she had been passed on to Cross, and he had been taking care of that since then.

“So… are you the ship’s official hairdresser?”

“Unofficial.”

“For _everybody_?”, she stressed.

“That’s what the word ‘ship’ implies, doesn’t it?”

“So Tech’s hair is your fault.”

He couldn’t help it. He snorted.

“Cross, that has to be a crime or something. Stop it at once.”

“On my defence: it started as a prank, but now he unironically likes it, so…”

“I can’t believe I’ll have to undo your sin.”

“It’s not that bad.”

She shot him a killer glare through the mirror.

“Okay, yes; it looks like there’s a mouse curled on top of his head. Are _you_ going to tell him?”

“No, I’m going to give him a different haircut, for fuck’s sake”, she hissed, eyes darting to the floor as she thought. “Does he like having his hair touched? How do I inconspicuously cuddle him?”

“You plot about the weirdest _osik_ …”

“I plot about cuddling 24/7.”

“I don’t know what those numbers mean.”

“Good, it’s funnier this way”, she went back to cryptic mode, much to Crosshair’s dismay.

“Don’t try to cuddle me. I _will_ kick you off.”

“I know, I know”, Ducky appeased him.

He waited a moment for her to get comfortable in the silence before jabbing her.

“Are you going to tell me what have you spent the day brooding over?”, he made his move, not taking his eyes off from the strand of hair he was cutting.

If she wanted to walk out with a consistent hairstyle, she would have to talk.

“…You’re an asshole”, she mumbled when she realised she was trapped.

“Tell me something new”, Crosshair chuckled.

Dani pressed her lips closed and looked away. A futile attempt, really.

“Come on”, he nudged her lightly.

Her lower lip trembled, and she swallowed.

“When am I going to be told off for fucking up?”, her voice shook and broke as she went.

The tension was back in her frame. Cross looked at her through the mirror, but she didn’t meet his gaze. He pretended he didn’t see the tears.

“…I think you already know what you did wrong.”

She sobbed. The sniper startled, uncomfortable. He hadn’t even meant it to sound cutting or rude, why was this so hard—

“I-I’m s-sorry”, she hiccupped, hunching on herself.

Crosshair put away his tools.

“Nobody is angry at you.”

An understatement: he had been pissed about Wrecker taking the hit for her, yeah; but he couldn’t negate that she would have been blown to gory pieces and that Wrecker had only acted as a shield because he wanted to.

But he thought that was the ‘right’ thing to say. He _thought_ , because Dani sobbed harder and it this point he was pretty sure he was either very bad at this or there were no real correct answers to these situations.

He squeezed her shoulder gently, if not a bit awkwardly.

“Do you like it?”, he gestured at the mirror.

Ducky rubbed furiously at her eyes and blinked at her reflection, giving a nod.

“…I have a plan so you can change Tech’s hairstyle.”

Her hiccupping cut off abruptly.

He swept his hand over Tech’s head and ruffled it wildly.

“Wha—What are you doing?!”, he complained, startled out of his work.

“Whoops”, Crosshair said unapologetically. “What a mess.”

“Why did you do that?!”, he looked at his reflection on the nearest datapad, and immediately started to try to reconstruct his hair.

“Can I?”, Dani chirped innocently, sharing a low-five with Cross behind her back.

He jumped a little where he sat, blinking as he considered her offer.

“I guess?”

Accepting that as an invitation, she sunk careful fingers in his hair, feeling out the texture and malleability. She was just exploring, really: ready to draw back the moment she felt the slightest hint of discomfort or awkwardness, but after a moment of stillness Tech seemed to lean towards her, letting out a low content hum.

Dani smiled and played with his hair: drawing swirls with a finger or swiping her hand over it to flatten it or making it stand on edge experimentally. He even removed his goggles so she had uninterrupted access to his whole head. It wasn’t long until he abandoned whatever he had been working on and leant back, just enjoying the attention.

“What do you think?”, she asked softly after a while, when she was satisfied with her work.

Tech startled out of the doze he had fallen in and patted around for his goggles, holding them in front of his eyes to squint at his reflection.

“It’s… spiky”, he mused.

Ducky had managed to redistribute the mound hair around. There was still work to be done, but she was positive about it.

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah”, he shrugged in a manner that said that he really didn’t care about it.

Small victories.

At night, Dani gravitated back towards Wrecker.

She brought her pillow with her and dropped it next to him to sit comfortably. He was drowsy from medication, but still lighted up when they all camped on the ground to have dinner with him.

Later, when it was pretty clear that Ducky was avoiding their gazes so they couldn’t suggest she went to sleep, the other Batchers exchanged looks.

 _Extraction?_ , signed Tech.

Hunter glanced at Crosshair, but he made no move.

The Sergeant looked back at Dani and Wrecker: at how she had kinda gone back to last night’s position: one arm wrapped around his head in a gentle embrace, while now her free hand stretched to grab his.

Cross had debriefed him in what had happened in the refresher.

He was positive they _could_ coax her into going to bed, but…

It was her first scare, he guessed. When Tech had been hurt, he had been more or less alright and they hadn’t known each other that well.

And he hadn’t been blind at her mopping around. If she felt guilty and needed to keep Wrecker in sight, they could fix something up.

“Dani”, he called, and she reluctantly looked over. “Will you be sleeping here tonight?”

“Yes”, she immediately replied, folding her legs under herself.

“Let’s settle, then.”

The three commandos stood up and scattered. Tech and Crosshair helped change Ducky’s and Wrecker’s dressings. After a whole day under bacta, her burns were now mostly healed, with only a few splotches over her shoulders.

“Alright. I’ll put some cream and normal dressings, and tomorrow it’ll be completely healed”, Tech hummed, and did just that. “How’s it looking?”, he asked Crosshair.

“Not worse”, was all he said, and that was the best they were hoping to get.

Hunter came back, Dani’s blanket balled in his hands.

“Here”, he passed it to her.

“Maybe we can gather up some more blankets to make a sort of matress—”

“Or she can have my bunk”, Tech shrugged. “I’ll nod off in the pilot seat, or—”

“No need”, Wrecker mumbled even with his eyes closed.

And with a lazy but aberrantly strong and effortless move, he snaked an arm around Dani’s waist and pulled her up into the bunk with him.

“Wreck!”, Tech tried to admonish him, but his only response was a deeper exhale as he fell back asleep.

Ducky’s eyes darted around from her new position, still trapped but not really uncomfortable.

Crosshair sighed and leant down to retrieve her pillow.

“Good luck not dying under his weight”, he said, and hopped on the bunk above.

“We could—“, Hunter started to offer with a grimace.

“It’s fine”, she cut him, her voice reassuring and eyes slowly closing. “We’re fine.”

She wiggled a bit, getting comfortable, and turned a bit towards Wrecker, noise resting above his forehead.

Hunter heard her fall asleep right after that. Tech was staring at him with his head slightly tilted. He shrugged at him, letting the amusement show in his eyes. Tech returned a grin and pulled out a camera.

A few holopics were snapped that night.

Morning arrived, and everybody was still breathing.

“Raise and shine”, Crosshair poked his bunk buddies.

Hunter came back with three mugs of caff, while Tech rubbed at his eyes and rolled out of bed.

Wrecker let out a loud, complaining moan, and suddenly froze.

“Uh, there’s someone on my bunk.”

“Yeah, your hostage”, Crosshair scoffed. “Let her get up, you rascal.”

“’M not holding her. She’s not moving.”

A heavy weight settled on everyone’s chest.

Wrecker raised on his elbows, hand going to shake Ducky’s shoulder.

“…Dani?”

“…huh?”, was the weak reply.

“Dani, wake up”, Tech ordered, striding over to her. “What’s wrong?”

He got another hum as a reply.

“Dani”, Hunter called, tone the kind that carried authority. If military or parental, nobody was calm enough to distinguish.

She winced at his voice, but that was it.

“Help me lower her”, Tech asked, and together they got her flat on the ground. “Check her burns.”

“Ducky?”, Wrecker asked, trying to raise up.

“Easy there”, Crosshair stopped him, and grabbed his own medical supplies. “She’ll be alright. Let’s get you cleaned up too.”

Still, he dragged himself a bit closer to the edge, where he could keep an eye on her.

“It’s not infected”, Hunter reported with a confused frown.

Tech jerked from where he was holding her into a sitting position and taking her pulse and shuffled over to look for himself.

“This should be healed by now”, he mused.

“Uh… guys?”, Crosshair said slowly.

“The area isn’t hot to the touch”, the Sergeant went on.

“Maybe we missed a headwou—”

“GUYS!”, the sniper snapped.

They both jerked, Tech returning to Dani’s front in case there was a cue or new symptom, but when he didn’t see anything out of place he looked over at his apparently bewildered brother.

“What?”, he prompted, letting irritation fill his voice.

“There isn’t a hole anymore.”

They heard the sentence, but it didn’t register because it didn’t make sense.

“…What?”

“There’s no wound anymore, the wound has scarred!”, Crosshair said between gritted teeth.

Tech darted to his feet. Hunter would have done the same, but he found his arms full of Ducky.

“Tech?”, he asked, needing to know what was going on.

“There’s no wound”, he confirmed with breathless wonder, eyes sliding to Dani.

Wrecker, who had remained silent and attentive, attempted to stand again.

This time Cross wasn’t fast enough to stop him, and before anyone could be alarmed he was standing like nothing had happened to him.

Which shouldn’t be possible. It should have taken him a week to stand up without pain _at least_.

But Wrecker was _healed_.

“Oh, shit”, Tech hissed, turning to face Hunter and check if he had already connected the two dots.

“Force-healing”, they echoed.

“Ducky!”, Hunter shook her urgently. “Ducky, you gotta tell us what’s wrong!”

She released a disgruntled, notably pissed off grumble.

“Lemme sleep…”, she kicked out, catching Tech’s ankle, and then turned herself in Hunter’s hold and clung to his waist, settling down on top of him.

Silence filled the room, amusement raising like dough.

The Sergeant shot the others a warning glare.

“I’ll, uhm, get an IV, just in case”, Tech cleared his throat, and zipped away.

Dani blinked at Wrecker’s back.

More particularly, at the lack of wound.

“I did that?”

“We’re pretty sure it wasn’t the bacta, yes”, Crosshair nodded.

“You don’t know how you did it?”, Tech asked.

“I, uh… I had this weird warm feeling? Like I was emanating it. And it was going away, so it wasn’t a fever, so I didn’t think anything of it. But when I woke up I was very tired, like I hadn’t slept, so… yeah”, she explained vaguely, sipping on milk. A plaster covered the back of her hand, where the IV had gone in. It might not have been key, but it had surely helped when she had went on sleeping for ten hours.

“Could you do it again?”, he pressed.

“I don’t know how I did it”, Ducky grimaced.

Hunter looked down at the vibroblade he had been fidgeting with.

“Well, let’s try it with something small.”

And he sliced a cut across his pinkie.

“DUDE!!!”, Dani jumped, hastily putting away the mug. Wrecker had to hurry to steady it so it wouldn’t spill. “WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!”

With two long strides she was by him, eyes fixed on the flowing blood and already reaching for his hand.

She was finally the pinpoint the feeling of it as soon as she touched him.

The warmth had grown and accumulated within her, like nervousness usually does, but when her fingers took a hold of his hand it flowed away from her chest and towards him; the sudden cold making her shiver.

Hunter was having a shiver of his own: his due to the sensation of his flesh knitting itself together, as minor as it was.

By the time Dani had jerked away in reaction to the unfamiliar outburst, the cut was no more.

“Congrats”, the Sergeant managed to snap out of his shock. “You know how to do that.”

He didn’t expect the stinging slap to his arm.

“Don’t do that ever again!”, she barked angrily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AHA you guys thought Wrecker is the teddy bear?????? Jokes on you Ducky is the one being treated like a plushie!!!!!!
> 
> Crosshair when Wrecker is incapacitated: why isn't the Back-Up Wrecker kicking in?  
> 
> 
> Bored while waiting for the next chapter? Consider checking the rest of the series or joining the Discord server! (link in the series description)


	21. Feeling Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dark blue-skinned alien
> 
> And an assassin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS: second-hand embarassment, heavy angst, fear of death, fear of suffocation, character asking for a mercy kill, hoping for death
> 
> Weird combo, I know

“Uh-oh”, Wrecker voiced from in front of the fridge, a towel still draped over his shoulders after his weight lifting and shower. “Hunter, we’re out of milk!”

“Crosshair, we’re out of milk”, the Sergeant called, not looking up from his datapad.

“Technically, we’re out of milk”, he parroted as he kept on crunching.

“Ducky, we’re out of milk.”

“Tragic.”

She held valiantly, but the combined stares of the team itched too much.

“Okay, okay!”, she grumbled, putting her colouring book and markers aside and going to grab the credit chip.

“We’re leaving in five”, Hunter informed her.

“Oh, so now you’re rushing me?”, she complained as she snatched a maroon light jacket.

She didn’t wait for a reply, walking out into the space station.

In moments like these, stepping out into what back at home would be considered state-of-the-art engineering but was instead a dingy, lawless station too near the borders of Separatist and Republic space to have any permanent settlers, Dani realised her normal life wasn’t so normal anymore.

She walked, steps purposeful and eyes trained on her objective, avoiding eye contact. That, and wearing a bored expression was one of the best precautions to take when strolling alone, even if it was to go around the corner to buy milk.

If that failed, she had her pocket knife and the knowledge on how to efficiently use it.

And if _that_ failed, cloaking herself and slithering away was always a solid option.

Ducky quickly located the blue milk within the store, bouncing a bit on her heels as the cashier collected the few credits on costed. She walked out of the building studying the blue liquid.

Blue milk.

Milk.

Milk, because there was no point in calling it ‘blue’ when nobody in this goddamn galaxy had ever seen white milk.

Crosshair still thought she was trying to prank him.

The difference in colour had warranted wariness from her: it felt a bit more like drinking the sky, but the taste was more or less the s—

Her thoughts were interrupted as she rounded a corner and she clotheslined into a deep blue arm, falling flat on her back. She managed to hold onto the precious bottle, but something else rolled out of her black hoodie.

The other person tripped, didn’t really fall, but they dropped something.

“Oh, I’m SO sorry!”, a slightly clicking voice said from above as Ducky regained her bearings, instantly relaxing at the apology and subsequent realisation that it had been an accident, not a direct attack. She looked up to meet a dark blue face with hard mandibles covering wide teeth, vestigial tentacles on top of their head smoothed backwards but twitching nervously. They leaned away from her stare, reaching out to grab the item she had dropped. “Here, you almost lost your… light… saber…?”, they tripped over their words.

Oh. Right.

She had been fidgeting with it before resuming her painting and had just slipped it into the hoodie’s pocket.

Blushing with nervousness and embarrassment, her short-circuiting brain decided it was a better idea to offer something back than immediately snatch and hide the weapon.

“Aw geez fuck that was totally my fault, sorry! Here, let me—“, she reached for what _they_ had dropped, and discovered, mortified, that it wasn’t something but _someone_. She sprung to her feet and hurried to help them up. “—you dropped your… clone?”, she choked.

There was an awkward, unending moment in which the trio blinked at each other; everyone rotted to their spot and brains steaming as their paranoias were set off and free.

“I won’t talk about it if you don’t talk about it”, Dani blurted out, reaching out with a hand to ask for her lightsaber back.

It was a dumb thing to say: someone could be being kidnapped here, but the tension was escalating and she didn’t feel like participating in an hysterical argument today.

“Deal”, the blue skinned person said, and the weapon was returned.

“Deal? _Deal_?”, the clone stressed in bewilderment. “Naai’na’ra, we just got CAUGHT!”

“Nobody’s being kidnapped?”, she asked meekly.

“No! No: it’s all very consensual”, Naai’na’ra replied softly, bobbing their head.

“Oh, good”, Dani blinked up at them.

And they blinked down at her.

And she blinked up at them.

“YOU THERE!”, an unfamiliar, very annoying voice called from around the corner where they could be seen but not Dani.

“Shit!”, the clone hissed, and forcefully grabbed at his companion’s arm to push them past the girl.

“Wait!”, she called, startled; and quickly redirected them to an alley instead of letting them run down the street. “Stay quiet, trust me!”, she pleaded in a whisper, cloaked them to be safe, and hurried to return to the corner.

Two security guards collided with her, but this time she was ready and she didn’t fall to the ground.

“You!”, one of them rudely entered her personal space. “Two suspects just rounded the corner, wearing a brown cloak and black poncho! Did you see them?!”

Tech had told her about the security forces of these kind of places: they were mostly third-parties that applied the rules and laws that were more convenient for the person who currently held the biggest amount of money in this floating tin-can.

“Eh, uh, actually… yes!”, she chirped. “They went that way!”, and pointed in the opposite direction.

They took off without another word.

Dani waited until they were out of view, and then a minute more, and then she turned to the alley.

“Okay, they’re gone”, she whispered to them.

They emerged slowly, warily, but she wasn’t going to call them out on it.

“Thank you”, Naai’na’ra said softly, eyes wide and full of gratitude.

“It’s nothing”, Ducky scratched the back of her head with a nervous smile. “I, uh, I’m Dani. She/her.”

“Oh! I’m Naai’na’ra. Also she/her. But… you can call me Naai, if you’d like”, her mandibles reverberated, and she lifted an arm to still her head tentacles.

“Naai’na’ra”, the clone growled in warning.

“And this is Slick. He/him”, she proceeded.

“Nice to meet you both”, Dani went for politeness. You couldn’t go wrong with politeness.

“Yeah, sure”, he scoffed, and moved around Naai, grabbing her arm in a futile effort to tug her away from her staring contest with Dani.

“Wait”, Naai’na’ra whispered urgently, holding him back and hidden. “Who is that?”, she asked, inclining her head only the bear minimum the keep the suspicious presence in sight.

Ducky didn’t need to look over to sense Tech and Hunter around the same corner she had met Naai and Slick at, but turned just to glare at Tech, who wasn’t being particularly inconspicuous.

“Uh, that’s Technically, my uncle”, her brain decided that was a good alibi.

“Why ‘technically’?”, she asked slowly.

“I dunno, he’s just named like that”, Dani shrugged.

They kept on staring at each other, Dani blushed harder and the vibration of Naai’s mandibles intensified.

Slick looked between them, seemingly feeling second-hand embarrassment.

“Oh, gosh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be rude, I just misunderstood—”

“Nah, it’s okay, it’s okay, I get it! It was weird for me too at the beginning…”, she grinned nervously, and sucked in a particular sharp breath, gathering courage. “Listen, I see you’re busy at the moment but would you—”

She choked when a compulsive seep revealed a presence at the edges of her range, cold and determined and _hunting_ —

“—could I have your comm number?”, she blurted out.

Naai startled.

“I, uh… yes, sure!”, she fumbled.

The glee Ducky felt at her answer mingled with the cold slipping down her spine, making her fidget and fret.

Slick squinted at her.

“Got a problem?”, he asked suspiciously.

“Yeah, now it’s me who’s in kind of a rush”, she grinned nervously, eyes darting and unfocusing as she kept track of the presence.

“Can we help you?”, Naai’na’ra asked gravely, already handing out her code.

“Stay safe”, was all she asked in a hush, and darted away and towards her uncles. “Ventress!”, she hissed, loud enough that Hunter would pick it up as she made it to where they were standing. “Ventress is here!", she said louder for Tech as they reached up to slow down her dash.

They reached over in tandem to place a hand on her back and push her back towards the ship, pace brisk and eyes alert.

“Is she coming?”, Hunter asked.

Ducky tilted her head, eyes listing as she checked.

“No, she’s— _Dank farrik_!”

“Language!”

Asajj seethed as she stalked her prey.

All life-forms flinched and gave her a wide berth, not wanting to risk making eye contact and hurrying to get away.

Not that the assassin could blame them: even she was sure that she would stab the first thing that came within her range.

The clone sergeant was supposed to do some damage from within, not seek another way to get out!

The _only_ way to get out, really, because she hadn’t cared nor expected the clone to survive its stunt.

If she weren’t so furious at her frustrated plan, she would even feel a flicker of shocked respect for whoever had managed to sneak the clone out of the GAR _and_ Republic space.

Not that they were going to make it much further, she thought with a predatory snarl. She was close. She _knew_ it. She could smell the subdued fear, the tiny speck of the Dark she had sowed within the clone, the—

A flash of light, of _presence_ rendered her Force-blind for a mere two seconds, making her stagger and freeze. The people around her halted too, casting expectant glances her way. With only a low snarl, the amblers hurried back to their business, and Ventress turned to her juicier objective.

Dani had sensed Asajj heading for Naai and Slick, and. Yeah.

She might have panicked.

Her first reaction was to act as a diversion, because they didn’t know danger was coming and it felt _right_.

But then she stopped herself, because attracting the Sith would mean lead her to her _titos_ , and that wasn’t fair.

But Naai and Slick were in danger.

But then her family would be in danger, and she couldn’t just decide that for herself, could she?

Aw, Hunter and Tech were trying to get her to talk. She was frozen and it had already been four seconds since she cussed. She really needed to speed things up, and come up with a really well compressed explanation for what she wanted to—

And her indecision took the choice from her hands: because she fucking _slipped_ , and she knew exactly the moment Ventress recognised her through the Force.

“ _Pakshet_!”, she swore, cringing at her mess-up.

“What? What is it?”, Hunter pressed, a bit relieved that she was responsive again, but tense nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, she’s seen me!”, her voice pitched in fear.

The men quickened their strides, pushing Ducky with them.

“Cross, start up the engines; we have a tail. We’re leaving _now_ ”, Tech said lowly into his wristcomm.

“Copy”, was the curt reply.

“What’s her ETA?”, Hunter asked Dani as they ran to the ship; the crow parting for the barrelling trio.

“Oh, uh—she’s still away! I think we can get there in time!”, she approximated.

“Cutting it close?”

“Isn’t that the only way we do it around here?”, she managed to joke with a breathless smirk.

He would have playfully clouted her, but the _Havoc Marauder_ was already in view, with Wrecker standing at the entrance with his heavy blaster out and scaring the people around.

“Get in, get in!”, Tech called ahead.

“Is that…?!”, he started, straightening to look at something far behind them.

“GET IN!”, the three runners hollered, not waiting for him to stop aside to jump into the ship.

Wrecker hit the opposite wall, Hunter and Tech hit Wrecker and Ducky hit Hunter and Tech and they bounced back; but she was quick enough to slap the door closed so nobody ended out again.

“Cross, take off, NOW!”, Hunter shouted.

The _Marauder_ immediately careened, sending them against the wall again. Dani held the milk bottle up, miraculously still whole and full.

“I’ll put that away”, Wrecker took it from her, braced against the wall.

Hunter and Tech were already hurrying towards the cockpit, and Ducky didn’t know what else to do but follow them. She could feel Ventress down at the landing platforms as they crossed the protective shield; still for a moment stewing on anger before she sprang to action again.

Dani startled at that, the spike of malice and determination sending shivers down her spine.

“I think she’s going to follow us”, she announced shakily.

“With what ship? What’s she’s gonna do, stea—“, Cross started, but interrupted himself as the proximity alert beeped. “Never mind.”

He made a sharp swerve, throwing everyone else off balance. They scrambled to hang onto something as one.

“ _Someone_ could go man the guns”, the sniper shamelessly sassed.

“Just jump into hyperspace!”, Tech countered.

“Sure! When she’s not licking our ass!”

“I’m going!”, Hunter shot towards the post.

Ducky would have gone, but… she wasn’t very good with those yet.

Another lurch sent her tumbling as the ship shifted into a nosedive, dangerously close blaster bolts shooting into the endless void.

The sound of breaking glass didn’t even startle them.

“…We’re out of milk!”, Wrecker called.

“Strap down already!”, someone snapped; she was too stressed to distinguish who as she dove for a seat and tugged at the safety belts.

“The local authorities really aren’t going to move a finger, huh”, Tech hummed from his own seat.

“You don’t say”, Cross growled, about to take another sharp turn when the sound of their own blaster fire prompted a smoother manoeuvre. “To where?”, he asked, but was already flicking switches to activate the hyperdrive.

“Does it matter?! Hit it!”

With an indignant scoff, Crosshair righted the _Marauder_. Through the viewport, the stars seemed to elongate.

An impact rattled the ship, and alarms went off as the ship shot into hyperspace.

Tech lunged for the terminals, even as everything shook and the main lights went out, leaving only the emergency ones.

Dani clutched at the seat when the artificial gravity failed.

“Nobody panic!”, Tech called with a tad tense tone from somewhere behind her.

The ship rattled harder.

“I’m dropping out!”, Cross strained, already reaching for the controls.

“What? No! We’re too close, she could find us again!”

He paid him no mind.

The shaking ceased as the starts turned back into dots, and then he was already unbuckling himself and kicking his way over to Tech.

“Keep an eye on the sensors”, he told her as he floated by.

Ducky scrambled to undo her own belts and propelled herself to the pilot seat, having to rely on her arms’ strength to sit herself down.

The lights flickered back on.

“Okay, now the gravity”, she heard Cross press.

“‘Thank you for bringing back the lights, Tech. It’s great to see what we’re doing, Tech’. You’re welcome!”

“Damage report”, Hunter hauled himself into the cockpit, glancing at Wrecker, who was trying to hold what had been Tech’s metal junk pile relatively together. “Wreck, get over here.”

Crosshair and Tech sent him a dubious look.

“Yes, we _all_ get over here to help with the repairs”, the Sergeant reiterated.

“Once I fix the gravity I’ll run some deeper scans”, Tech said, and pulled out a bunch of wires. “Engine is good, stabilizers are good; but something made the power go out and the general reset isn’t working, that’s why I’m having to do one system at a time.”

“We’ll take care of the gravity generator, you start those scans. Where’s Ducky?”, he asked as he took the wires Tech offered and handed them to Wrecker and Crosshair.

“Keeping an eye on the proximity sensor”, Cross muttered, considering the connections his brother was holding.

Hunter considered calling her over for a moment, but they were already crowded and as long as Tech couldn’t pinpoint what else needed repairs she was better off keeping guard.

So he helped Tech remove a larger panel and ease himself deeper into the bowels of the _Havoc Marauder_ to plug one of his datapads to a control chip plate.

They pointedly didn’t comment on the intermittent high-pitched alarm still blaring, holding onto hope.

“Gravity coming back!”, Wrecker called and made a short countdown so everybody could abandon sensitive tasks to experience the small fall.

Dani cheered from the cockpit, and that created a knot in their chests.

But they willed themselves to stay calm as they waited for Tech to finish.

It felt like an eternity within minutes, but finally he slid back out, his face blank and eyes fixed on the datapad.

“Tech?”, he finally prompted.

“There’s a breach in the air recycler”, he whispered, still not meeting their eyes.

They pressed their lips in a thin line, not bothering to ask if it could be fixed. It couldn’t: the life support systems could only be accessed from the outside through several layers of panels.

Panels that had apparently taken the worst of the blaster shot that had hit them.

“Options”, Hunter called.

“We could head back?”, Wrecker jumped immediately.

“Hyperspace would suck the air out faster”, Tech quietly shook his head. “And we’re too far to make it back to the station in sub-light speed.”

“Distress signal”, Crosshair suggested instead.

“Go”, Hunter nodded his permission, and the sniper shot up towards the front of the ship.

Tech had a distant look, his eyes darting every now and then.

“Hey”, Wrecker nudged him, and the slicer scowled.

“Don’t poke me, I’m thinking!”

“Thinking of what?”, Hunter huffed with a humourless shrug.

“Some way to stop the loss of air or compensate it with something or—”

“ _What_ way, Tech?”, he asked with defeated frustration.

“I don’t know, SOMETHING!”, his own frustration was much louder.

Dani jerked to a stop where she had been walking in front of Crosshair, who put a hand on her shoulder.

“Tell her”, he said, looking at Tech and then Hunter and Wrecker when they tensed in hesitation.

“Cross—”

“We’re NOT hiding this from her”, he growled. “ _Tell her_.”

“Tell me what?”, Ducky asked, voice already shaky.

“I’ll find a way to fix it”, Tech jumped. “There’s no need to—”

Crosshair rolled his eyes to infinity and beyond.

“The life support system is damaged. We’re losing air and we can’t fix it.”

His tone wasn’t unkind, just brutally realistic.

They all saw her go stiff, eyes going wide and fixed in an undetermined point as her breathing hitched and she went on to take a few controlled breaths.

“The distress beacon is on”, the sniper squeezed her shoulder gently and pushed her to sit down. “Now we wait.”

“I can fix it”, Tech insisted, turning away and towards the open panel so he didn’t have to see how Dani made herself small against the wall, shaking and fighting to stay calm.

Hunter took a few steadying breaths of his own to gather courage, but Wrecker got ahead of him.

“How long do we have?”

“Forever, because I’m going to fix—”

“ _Tech_ ”, Hunter said pointedly.

“…About three hours before total depletion”, he replied angrily, unscrewing a bolt harder than it was necessary.

Ducky curled further on herself, breath hitching.

“Calm down”, the Sergeant muttered softly, hesitant to offer comfort when he wasn’t particularly calm himself. “Panicking will consume more oxygen. We just have to make the most of it. There’s time.”

“S-Sorry”, she hiccupped. “Sorry, I’m trying, sorry, I—”

She suddenly shot to her feet and left for her room.

“Duc—“, Wrecker reached after her.

“Give her a moment”, Hunter held him down by a shoulder.

He looked back at his other brothers to see Tech running scans with a vengeance and Crosshair shoving a toothpick in his mouth, already biting at it.

His own fingers twitched for the reassurance of a hilt, of something to do, something to fight.

He would have to do with something to do with his hands while thinking.

Dani retched into the toilet, unable to fight the reflex anymore. She had hoped it would make her feel a little better, but the nausea left only to make room for the burn in her throat and an increment of her headache.

She was still on her knees, scrubbing furiously at the tears marring her face when two loud bangs sounded on the door and it opened without waiting for her answer.

“Move”, Crosshair said bluntly, and fell to his knees beside her.

It was fortunate that she had already leaned back in surprise.

She witnessed him awkwardly, wondering if he would like a pat on the back or not; and she ended mostly staring at their combined mess with apprehension.

Cross slapped the flush, shifting to sit on his legs, and casted her a brief glare.

“What?”, he croaked. “You’re not the only one allowed to have the jitters.”

“I know”, she croaked back, voice fading to nothingness.

Ducky reached over to grab some wipes and handed him some, keeping a few before hauling herself over to the sink and drenching them in water to clean her face.

She was still trembling.

Crosshair was still trembling.

They had nothing to say, so they said nothing.

Tech ran all the diagnostics he could think of, and when they didn’t show anything useful he ran them again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

It was an endless cycle of plugging and unplugging and running the scans again and resetting systems and shutting systems and unplugging and running scans and resetting and plucking out a chip plate and—

There had to be _something_!

Something he could do, something _only_ he could do; because his batchmates didn’t know about this and Dani didn’t know about this and they _couldn’t_ learn it like he did—

And if he didn’t find a way to fix this then they would—

…

They would die because of him.

Wrecker had headed to the gym to entertain himself with lifting, but as he grabbed a weight he had realised that tiring himself and sweating wouldn’t be a good idea.

He had slowly set the weight down, feeling at a loss.

But it was fine. He could do other things.

He tried to offer his help to Tech, but he was turned away with a frustrated grumble. Ducky and Crosshair had both made themselves scarce, and he could hear Hunter chopping things in the galley.

So he grabbed a datapad to read and lied on his bunk.

Minutes ticked by, and he was still bored. It took too much concentration to keep the buzz in his mind contained to be able to read.

But if he did nothing, then the buzz was impossible to subdue.

The thoughts sliced their way to the front of his mind, and he wondered.

Wondered if suffocating would feel like his most demanding trainings, when even the great gulps of air he took didn’t feel enough.

Wondered who would die first, if it would be Tech and Dani for being smaller; or if it would be him for being bigger and needing more oxygen.

He really hoped it would be the latter.

Dani had gone to her room because having them stare while she fought to stay calm wasn’t helping her cause.

She went for her usual coping mechanism and scrolled through her phone: first social media and then saved pictures when she ran out of new content, but then a picture of Lian came up and her eyes watered again, a pitiful whine escaping her throat as the thought that she might join her mother soon crossed her mind.

That took her to desperately paw with the printed photo, and she cried too: because she would either join them _both_ or she would just never see her _tatay_ again, even if she had kinda given up on that.

It was her own fault that she had given up on looking for him.

…

It was her fault that the Bad Batch was in this predicament.

She put the picture away and snatched her colouring book, but the thought clawed in her ears and her hands shook too much to paint.

It was her fault. It was her fault. Ventress was after her, not _them_ , and if she had just left for Coruscant like she had said she would now her _titos_ wouldn’t be about to die with her, and she had already fucked up that mission when Wrecker had to protect her and now she was getting them all killed at once and—

The air in her room was getting thinner.

Hunter had ended up chopping ingredients in the galley, yes.

His mind was busy and so were his hands, and that’s when he could think better.

The distress beacon was on, and there was nothing else to do about that but wait.

The air leak couldn’t be fixed, but they had a couple oxygen masks stored in the medbay with their own supply.

As small as it was, it would give them some more time to be rescued.

The Sergeant put the knife down and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed shut as he fought back the headache.

This was a disaster.

This was a disaster, and he had failed them all, and…

…He needed to talk to them. They were a team.

‘Til the end.

He turned to the door and found Crosshair standing there.

Hunter startled, and then they both stared at each other, trying to read the other’s mind.

“If nobody comes”, the sniper started. “If we’re all suffocating—”

“—Cross—”

“—I want you to kill me”, he stated, horribly calm.

And Hunter couldn’t outright deny him, because he knew.

He knew Crosshair had had a _horrible_ time back in the experimental wings, knew that he was the only one he had confided that there was nothing he feared more than a slow, lonely death.

But he also couldn’t—

“Promise me”, the sniper insisted.

“Cros—“, he spoke through the knot in his throat.

“Promise me or I swear on 99; I will ask the kid to do it and leave you to deal with that”, he threatened, eyes burning with anger and expression tense in challenge.

And at that moment Hunter imagined the possible outcomes, limbs shaking.

He took a deep breath, and said the only thing that would put his brother at ease.

“I promise.”

Ducky made her way to their bunks, looking scared.

They couldn’t get full breaths anymore, their chest tight as they tried to take deeper breaths without much success.

“Come here”, Hunter called softly from where he had gathered and sat everyone in a circle.

At the centre, there was a closed medkit and two oxygen masks.

“This one is for you”, he passed her a mask, and took the other. “And we’ll take turns on this one.”

“What?”, she snarled. “No: we’ll all take turns on both!”

“No”, Crosshair replied dryly, not even looking at her.

“We have decided”, Wrecker added.

“NO!”, she screeched, offense written in her expression. “You just can’t decide this shit without telling me, you just can’t decide to give a whole damn mask—”, her voice dimmed until she had to stop to gasp for air.

Tech leaned over to activate the mask and press it to her face, and she did take a first breath, but then leaned away.

“I don’t want it!”, she hiccupped, eyes overflowing.

“Dani, don’t make us sedate you”, Hunter pleaded.

“I DON’T WANT IT!”, she kicked out, trying to force Tech away from her.

Wrecker took a breath from their shared mask and moved forward, holding her legs down.

“Calm down”, he rumbled. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Ducky screamed, horrified just by thinking at the possibility of seeing them die around her, unable to do anything to help them, and couldn’t decide what would be worse: to die last and alone or to live long enough to be rescued.

Before her thoughts could spiral any further, something stabbed into her leg and she jerked.

She wasn’t able to sit up to see what had happened.

Crosshair discarded the emptied hypo and breathed into the mask.

“It’s better this way”, he said, looking at the cold ground.

Nobody disputed him.

Dani woke up disoriented, with something pressed to her face. She clawed at it, wondering why was she lying on the floor.

And then she saw them.

Tech was the only conscious and leaning over Wrecker, pressing the oxygen mask to his face even as he struggled to breathe.

Crosshair and Hunter weren’t moving.

“Tech?”, she croaked, pushing up to her elbows with shaky arms.

He turned to her, and his lips moved around her name, but no sound came out.

“Tech!”, she started to crawl to him.

He quickly ripped the mask away from his brother’s face to take a gulp himself, but he wavered as he moved to replace it and collapsed to a side.

“TECH!”, Ducky scrambled for him and futilely shook him. “Tech please please please!”

But he was unconscious, and so was Wrecker, and so was Crosshair, and so was Hunter and—

And she was alone.

The reality of the situation left her feeling as if floating in a void, suspended in an eternal second of nothingness.

And she imploded.

> **_H E L P !_ **

The desperate plea rippled through the Force like an earthquake, carrying undertones for those who were attuned to it: danger, loss, fear, despair…

All wrapped up in a very shinny beacon.

“-neral! General!”, voices were calling him.

It took him a moment to realise that he was on the bridge, and he wasn’t standing on his own.

“Change course”, he ordered the Admiral, getting his feet back under himself and giving a grateful wave to the men that had held him up. “I need a team ready to rescue a depressurized ship, stat”, he instructed his Commander, moving to give the new hyperspace directions himself.

Ducky managed to calm down enough to realise that the mask she was wearing would be the most helpful, and rotated them over her unconscious _titos_ even as she fought for air and calm.

It was nowhere near ideal and she wasn’t sure she was doing any good at all, but it was all she could do.

She cried all the way through it.

Black spots danced in her vision when an unsettling _clank!_ rocked the ship, but she chalked it to an hallucination. She took a desperate breath from the most depleted mask before pressing it against Crosshair’s face, moving the one that had been with Hunter to Tech, refusing to let it distract her, to stop.

And then the sound of a valve opening, and _wind_ wheezed by, and she choked on the suddenly _too much_ oxygen, lungs expending on their own accord and letting her fall limp on the floor.

“Over here!”, someone called, and she fought to blink the black spots away, to stand up, because _there were people on the ship, there were intruders on the ship—_

A new mask was pressed on her face, and she could only breath it in.

“It’s okay, you’re okay”, her father’s voice reassured softly.

“Blue code!”, someone yelled nearby.

Dani tried to twist enough to see what was going on.

“It’s okay, it’ll be okay”, the voice kept reassuring her. “Can you tell me your name?”

She couldn’t. She was busy breathing and her heart was thumping and _why were there so many people aboard?!_

A new figure approached, kneeling down on her other side.

“General”, the voice saluted.

“Tweez”, the man greeted back before looking down at her. “We finally meet”, he smiled faintly, but Ducky didn’t know nor care what that was about at the moment. “You did it. You saved your friends.”

Did she?

“You can rest, now.”

She didn’t think she could.

“We’ll take care of your friends. I promise”, he said solemnly.

“Sir, she should be moved to the medbay too ASAP.”

“Understood”, the General stood up, making a movement that was familiar to her but was unable to place. “Commander Ponds, we’re heading back. Be sure five beds are prepped in the medbay.”

“Yes, General Windu!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dani and Naai meeting in the 0th AU: young adults, met at a gala, slick as fuck  
> Dani and Naai meeting in this AU: awkward teens, met at a dingy spaceport, gay panic
> 
> me: *writes a shit-ton of buried trauma*  
> also me: now we don't have time to unpack all of that!!!
> 
> And now you know who Dani's Jedi Master will be in this AU


End file.
